Six bodies retrieved so far at Bay Horse Mine as search efforts continue
Story by Tambaoga Gora
IT is now day nine since the Bay Horse Mine disaster struck the Chegutu community with six bodies having been retrieved to date.
Chegutu senator, Ambassador Christopher Mutsvangwa this Friday visited the Bay Horse Mine following the collapse of a shaft with more than 30 artisanal miners underground.
Six bodies have since been retrieved so far with seven more bodies suspected to be still underground.
Huessein Phiri, who is leading fellow artisanal miners in the search efforts painted a gloomy picture of the situation underground.
“We are having challenges that most of the bodies are dismembered and are decomposing, some of the bodies are in pieces. We are searching for any remains and we give the relatives,” he said.
The Bay Horse community is now worried over the number of days it is taking to retrieve the bodies.
“The search team is doing a great job. We want them to be assisted, we are now worried the days are now many and the bodies are now decomposing. People ran away yesterday because of the state of the body,” said a community member.
Ambassador Mutsvangwa consoled the bereaved families and saluted the search team for their bravery before expressing government concern over safety issues in the small-scale mining sector.
“There is a courageous team here which has been going down every day this a mining district, this industry of gold mining was legalised in 2016 and it has made a dramatic improvement on the economy today gold outstrips tobacco as the major foreign currency earner with 66 percent coming from small miners we thus need to ensure that we improve safety, we improve inspectorate and safety issues are continuously addressed so the president was ceased with this matter in cabinet and there was a resolution by the cabinet that we want to do much more to ensure that there was a safe environment for gold miners).
Ambassador Mutsvangwa was accompanied by the Mashonaland West Minister of State for Provincial Affairs and Devolution, Honourable Marian Chombo.
