Reports Leo Odera Omolo
The National Environmental Management Authority {NEMA} has ordered one of the companies prospecting for gold in Migori and Nyatike to close down its pit mines with immediate effect.
The NEMA action followed the recent series of deaths involving mine workers in the greater Southern Nyanza connection to unsafe condition of the mine pits and the safety of gold diggers.
A total of 9 people have died within one month, they included one foreign investor, a Whiteman gold prospector from Zimbabwe.
The three perished inside a gold pit at Nyahera in Central Kasipul Location, Oyugis Division of Rachuonyo South district in the County of Homa-Bay.
The investor is reported to have entered the 20feet deep mine pit in a bid to retrieve the bodies of two of his worker who had suffocated to death from exhaust fumes after the water pump engine they were using in pumping out water which had logged filled inside the pit developed mechanical problem.
The dead investor’s body has since been flown out for burial in his native Zimbabwe country. Th two Kenyan workers hail from within the local communities.
The first death of 3 miners, all members of one family, occurred earlier in the month at Kanyasrega village in North Sakwa Location, Awendo district within Migori County.The pit, a disused former gold mine which was in use in the late 195s and early 1960a. Another man who was rescued from the rubble and rushed to the Hospital later died bringing the number of total victims to four.
The police chiefs in the area later issued a stern warning to the local people to steer clear of the disused mine pits in the area, threatening to mobilize members of the local communities to have the mines sealed off.
It was previously part of Kitere Gold Mines Ltd, which was in later years run and managed by he Commonwealth Development Corporation {CDC} which closed shops in 1063 shortly before the country attained its political independence in 1963.
The white miners left the county in huff in anticipation that chaos and mayhem usually associate with African politics, particularly after or during the elections.
The abrasive Nyatike MP Edick Omondi Anyanga recently appealed to the government to reorganize the mining of minerals in his constituency and in the neighboring region in order toke up the proper account of gold being taken outside the country for exports, to avoid a situation whereby some unscrupulous foreign investor siphoning mineral and exporting them though neighboring counties to avoid taxation by the Kenya Revenue Authority {KRA.
The third death involving three mines diggers took place in Nyatike constituency where three gol miners were buried alive when the land around the pit paved the way hurling tons of soil and rock on the pit as a result of heavy rains which has incessantly pounded the region since October, weakening the ground which paved the way exposing miners to a great danger.
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