Challenges facing small scale miners

1.Access to credit and finance

In Tanzania small scale miners are unable to secure loans from banks and other financial

institutions for their starting capital and this is especially the case for female miners and for

miners who operate without licenses. This is a lso due to lack of collateral and the possible

inability and unwillingness of the miners to pay back their loans.

2. Lack of equipment and machinery

One of the reasons why small scale miners are classified as small-scale miners is because of the kind of equipment and machinery they use. In most mining

sectors in Tanzania, small-scale miners use traditional techniques and low level equipment in

excavation or digging while as in South America, miners use rudimentary tools, manual devices or simple portable machines These tools are often not sufficient to carry out their activities and thus, they often do not perform to their maximum capabilities. This lack of equipment is worsened by the fact that miners do not have starting capital in order to acquire the tools they require. More so, miners have no access to credit from formal financial institutions for them to finance their operational requirements.

3. Poor technologies

Poor technologies used by small scale miners pose a danger to the miners themselves who are constantly harmed and even killed due to poor occupational safety standards.

The absence of machinery means work has to be done manually, thus resulting in fatalities. Also, many mines are not carefully planned due to the fact that they are illegal and therefore,

structures are made in such a way that they are easily concealed. In many countries across the world, including Tanzania, measures for prevention of mining accidents and other fatalities either do not exist or are not properly enforced.

4. Lack of skills

Most miners lack the technical know-how to improve their capacity in this specialized economic area. As a matter of fact most activities to support mining sectors have focused on large scale mining operations, mainly to improve their productivity, legal status or environmental performance. As a result the small scale miners earn very little raw materials.

5. Lack of market information and access to it is another challenge facing small scale miners in different mining regions in Tanzania. Most miners lack education hence have inadequate knowledge of pricing their products, this can be clearly manifest itself in how the miners sell their stones and the prices they sell it for, in comparison to the real value of the stones.

Apart from ‘obtaining finance’as the number one issue affecting small scale miners. Environment, safety, technical assistance, obtaining equipment, need for training, obtaining

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(Source: Alex Ruchyahinduru in After the Gold Rush)