Govt allocates diamond concession to Marange

TENDAI BHEBE

Government has allocated a diamond concession to a civil society organisations (CSO) consortium in the Marange  district, Manicaland Province as it moves to promote community development, Business Times can report.

The move is aimed at helping the country attain a US$12bn mining sector by 2023.

“We are very happy as a community to mention that the government allocated a concession to the (Marange) community so as to promote community development. We are putting the development right in the hands of the community. That’s devolution and that’s empowerment because we are going to be masters of the development of our own community,” Zimbabwe Disaster Relief Agency’s director general Hardwork Mukwada said.

He said the coalition created a constitution to guide them and the government stipulated that the community should be on one page for the concession to be operationalised.

“The magnitude of the project does not allow government to entrust such a project in the hands of a disjointed and fragmented community that would be a risk so our role as ZIDRA was to make sure that the whole community is on one page. Our starting point was to bring all the community based organisations operating in Marange under the same page whereby they formed a coalition called Marange United Front,” Mukwada said.

He said the CSOs intervention brought unity among traditional leaders in the community.

“So after that we brought the unity of the traditional leadership in Marange. Whereby the traditional leaders of the community have come together and we have assisted them to register a community trust which is called Chiadzwa community share ownership trust that’s the mother body which plays the oversight roles,” Mukwada said.

“There are pro diamond CSOs that are interested and instrumental in shaping up the welfare of the Marange community.”

Mukwada said their projects are set to begin in the first quarter of 2022.

“We are ready for it and we have come up with operational models and systems which will make everyone in the community benefits,” he said.

Chairperson of Marange Development Trust, Malvern Mudiwa said the government has shown commitment in mining by granting the Marange community a community claim.

“A positive result that we can see from the government from their initiative is that we have been given a community claim. These are the engagements we have been crying for ever since and we are now beginning to see the positives. Yes, there are hiccups here and there but we still have to put effort to involve even other communities.