The Zimbabwean government aims to carry out a nationwide river rehabilitation exercise in response to widespread degradation caused by riverbed mining.
Deputy chief secretary in the office of the President and Cabinet responsible for flagship infrastructure projects and programs, Amos Marawa told the media during a site tour of a prototype rehabilitation exercise being carried out by Prevail Group of Companies that riverbed mining had continued despite being outlawed in 2004.
“All provinces are working to identify sites along the identified rivers that have been degraded so that we can quantify the amount of work that needs to be done in terms of rehabilitation.
“And to kickstart that process, the government approved that we do a prototype project here at Muroodzi River in the Mazowe area from Mazowe town all the way to Glendale,” Marawa, who is also the chairperson of a working party dealing with the rehabilitation program, said.
“The rehabilitation prototype site is 5 kilometres in extent, but the level of degradation even along the 5 kilometres is not the same, so we had to come up with a rehabilitation plan, which we agreed with the company Prevail. They have done 3 kilometres.
“We chose the 3 kilometres to begin with because that was the most devastated location out of the 5 kilometres,” he added.
So we are here to assess the quality of work that is being done by Prevail since we had given them a specific scope. We now need to assess how they are meeting the scope that we agreed on and also the quality of the work being done.
“This will help us make an informed decision whether this type of work, which is the first of its kind in Zimbabwe, is something we can adopt so that other provinces affected by the scourge of river bed mining can then do site-specific work in their own area to return the ecosystem to its natural status.”
