18 Nov 2013

Commercial horticultural farmers along the Shashe River have complained about shortage of water in the river bed due to illegal sand mining.

They said unlike in the past years, they were experiencing acute shortage of water as the unregulated sand mining in the areas had affected the inflow of underground water downstream where their farms were located. 

In an interview, the North East regional agriculture coordinator, Mr Alfred Mashungwa said sand mining was a great challenge which had affected horticultural production in the region. He said due to shortage of water, streams were not feeding main rivers with enough water to bring more sand into rivers to supplement the mined sand.

With sand reduced, underground water in the river was significantly reduced because the sand crust in the river was the main coat which prevented water evaporation and therefore this has affected the water holding capacity of the river, he said.

However, he highlighted that although they had on several occasions engaged stakeholders such as the licensing authorities and land boards, no positive response had been received. 

For his part, Department of Mines’ principal engineer, Mr Barulaganye Ace said farmers’ claim came as a surprise because Gulushabe area had not been experiencing illegal sand mining problem unlike other areas.  

Mr Ace said they could neither confirm nor refute allegations that there were illegal sand mining activities taking place in Gulushabe area due to lack of capacity to carry out surveillance in the area.

He said they would have wanted to undertake frequent surveillance but due to manpower constraints with one technical officer for the northern area and some parts of central it was impossible. The farmers raised the same complaint at the recent World Food Day commemoration at Gulubashe farms in Tonota recently.  ENDS