Mrs Janet Adeniyi, the President, Women in Mining, has called on the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development (MMSD) to curb indiscriminate abandonment of mine sites by miners across the country.
Adeniyi made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Abuja.
She said that the number of abandoned mine sites across the country were on the increase, and called on the ministry to checkmate the trend.
She said that the consequences of abandoned mine sites could be very devastating and destructive to the environment including human health.
According to her, it costs huge amount to reclaim abandoned mine site.
Adeniyi advised MMSD to ensure its mines security officers visit mine sites often, especially where mining activities were ongoing to ensure that any pit created by miners were reclaimed to its normal state.
On her experiences on mine sites visited, she said that women operating as artisanal miners (illegal miners), operate with their children on their backs or laid them close to the mine pits.
“The women take their children to the mine sites, lay them by the side of the pits without any covering over them and they operate in pains everyday.
“The first site I visited in Jos in 2002, led to the registration of women in mining because I saw great poverty in them and they needed to earn their living from mining.
“What they were earning as at then from whatever they mined per day was less than 10 dollars because they were being exploited,” she said.
Adeniyi called on MMSD to formalise artisanal women into cooperatives to enable them operate as legal miners and to benefit from the Federal Government’s intervention loan. (NAN)

– June 21, 2018 @ 09:27 GMT |