Irony of poor Taita-Taveta miners in land of 'plenty'

Though Taita-Taveta County sits on billions of shillings worth of natural resources, this wealth means little to the residents, many of who continue to wallow in poverty. 

The county's diverse minerals, especially gemstones, have attracted investors from different corners of the world. 

These investors have camped in the county to mint real wealth, as locals scrape a living as casuals in the mining companies, earning peanuts from resources extracted from the bowels of their ancestral land.

The Taita-Taveta belt is the bedrock of high-quality gemstones in the country, including Tsavorite, ruby, tourmaline, red garnets and green garnets. 

Besides household poverty, the areas around Chungaunga, Mkuki, Alia, Amaka Kamtonga and Kuranze, where the gemstones are mined, there is little to show in terms of development. Here, residents have no access to water, roads and healthcare services.

A veteran miner, Mr Senja Changanya, said mining is a capital-intensive venture, a fact that locks locals out of the sector.

He further said mining locations are hard to secure, as the best ones are reserved for rich individuals. 

"The requirements for one to get permits are too many and ambiguous. One has to know someone in government for them to get the permits," he said. 

With Mining Act 2016 in place, the locals hope locations for artisanal and small-scale miners (ASMs) will be easy to secure since they will be set aside and reserved for the group. 

They also hope artisanal mining permits will be affordable.

"We don't know how much the artisanal mining permits will cost but we expect them to be affordable," Mr Senja said, urging the locals to venture into the trade in a group. 

Mr Senja is a member of Chawia community-based organisation, which has benefitted more than 1,000 locals.

The number has, however, gone down due to financial challenges and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Other groups that have been formed include Kasigau Dapata Mining CBO and Taita-Taveta artisanal mining association.

Mzee Senja is locally referred as 'Daktari wa miamba' (doctor of the rocks) due to his prowess in identifying potential gemstone rocks, a skill he has perfected over almost five decades.

"The locals are sitting on vast wealth, but they fear the huge expenses involved. Getting the location, licences and equipment is very expensive," he said.

Taita-Taveta Artisanal Miners Association chairperson David Zowe said they lack modern mining equipment, funds and a reliable market.

The miners work in unsafe conditions using hand-held tools to excavate and extract the gemstones.

Mr Zowe said their more than 200 members cannot afford modern equipment to venture into beneficial mining.

"The miners use chisels, shovels and buckets and mostly without compliance to industry standards. They are forced to smuggle in explosives from Tanzania for blasting," he said.

He said the association will partner with the Africa Social Financing Centre and the county government to establish a tsavorite market and auction centre in Voi town. The facility is expected to address the problem of funding and marketing of their gemstones. 

The facility will also help the miners access loans for capital investment.

"Our association will sort out some of these challenges," he said.

A gemstone dealer, Mr Javan Mghendi, said they are yet to get licences from the government since last year.

Mr Mghendi, who has also ventured into gemstones value addition, sells his stones and jewelry in the local market since he cannot export them as he does not have a licence. 

"Licences will open up our business as we’ll be able to sell our stones overseas," he said. 

He also complained about unlicensed foreigners who come into the country as tourists only to go to the mines to buy the stones.

"Most of these foreigners are from Sri Lanka. They purchase the stones at low prices. They are frustrating us. These are some of the reasons we are finding it difficult to do this business and the government should ban them," he said. 

The miners are optimistic the Sh60 million Voi Gemstone Value Addition Centre will help them get better prices for their stones.

The centre will offer services such as gemstone identification, valuation, value addition, marketing and financing.

The delay in the opening of the facility has raised concerns among stakeholders especially small-scale and artisanal miners in the county. 

Construction of the building began in 2015 and ended in 2018 and the government has already equipped and posted staff to the facility ahead of commissioning of the project.

Since then, the equipment have been lying idle at the facility as gemstone miners continue selling their raw stones at low prices. 
In February, the State Department of Mining gazetted the facility's management committee to pave the way for the operationalisation of the centre.

Kenyan government has expressed its keenness to increase the mining sector’s contribution to 10 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product by 2030 through value addition and implementation of new policies.

The government projects Sh3 billion in gemstones earnings annually once the facility is operational.

Most miners sell their stones to brokers, who smuggle them out of the country, making the government lose revenue worth billions of shillings annually. 

A miner in Kasigau, Mr Ezra Mdamu, said the government has neglected the mining sector despite its huge potential. 

He said the government should accord mining the same attention it gives to the agriculture sector. 

"Farmers are getting a lot of benefits and attention, but the government is doing little to help us," he said.

In a recent visit to the facility, the National Development Implementation Technical Committee led by Tourism Principal Secretary Sabina Kwekwe recommended its operationalisation to enable the miners to use it as they await the official commissioning by President Uhuru Kenyatta.

County Mining Chief Officer Reuben Ngeti said the department is developing a geodatabase of minerals, which will help in making mining decisions and identifying areas for artisanal miners.

"We are developing an inventory of artisanal miners and mining activities in the county. We have also trained artisanal miners on gemstones trading," he said.

The department is also planning to purchase hand-held drilling machines in the next financial year.

In 2017, the county government issued two compressors to Kasigau and Mkuki miners to make their work easier. 

He concurred that the Gemstone Value Addition Centre will benefit the miners and called for the immediate opening of the facility. 

Mineral Rights Board chairperson Stephen Kuria said the agency is working with the Ministry of Petroleum and Mining to gazette and operationalise the artisanal and small-scale mining committees across the country.

"The Taita-Taveta committee has already been gazetted. We are also conducting stakeholder consultations where we engage regional mining officers so they can work with these committees to agree on the ASM mining zones," he said. 

He said the exercise includes collecting baseline information on the ground. 

The team will work with the ASM community to better understand the structural challenges facing local miners and their communities in each area to ensure successful and appropriate policy design and implementation," he said.

He said formalisation of ASMs will be done in conjunction with Kenya Chamber of Mines, Haki Madini Kenya, Awakening Women's Potential in Oil, Gas and Mining and Association for Women in Extractives and Energy in Kenya (AWEIK), among other NGOs. 

"This will encourage the ASMs to form groups, cooperative societies and associations within their mining zones," he said.

Mr Kuria said the board has encouraged the miners to form small groups in order to benefit from government programmes. 

"However, this will be the last stage of formalisation of the ASMs. Currently, we are at the second stage," he said.

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