Negligence of good mining practices and non coorporation

Rethabile Tshabalala

Negligence of good mining practices and non-cooperation

The mines around our area have a severe impact on the environment. Most of them are very negligent when it comes to good environmental practices. Ikemeleng in Kroondal is a very contaminated place and affects our community negatively. We have no proper waste management, there is waste everywhere in these areas. Mines used to provide skipper bins but now they stopped providing them.

We also have a stream in our community and this stream is contaminated by a tailing dam when it is hot in summer you find kids swimming in this very same stream which can be harmful to their health, this water from this stream is no longer good for small scale farming as the soil has been contaminated and that degrades the quality of the produce.

Realising all these issues, I felt Inspired to do something but I didn’t know which steps to take. Terrence Ngobeni told me about the workshops he attended at Bench Marks Foundation, then he showed me the steps I could take. Since then, we’ve been collecting information and trying to create a database of all the issues in our community and how we could approach each of them in terms of solving them. I also feel that the mines don’t do much in terms of skills development, their only focus is mining skills, and the other opportunities that are there are received by people who don’t even come from our community. We need the following as young people of Kroondal:-

Skills and talent development in terms of

*Bricklaying

*Carpentry

*Sewing

*Computer literacy

*Music and arts

*Welding

*Entrepreneur skills

*Agriculture

If such opportunities were given to the youth, it would bring more development to the community and reduce the number of people depending on mines for employment.