Cibitoke: two gold miners dead in a landslide

Two gold miners were swept away by a landslide on Monday, May 13, on Myave hill in the Ndora zone in Bukinanyana commune, Cibitoke province, in the northwest of Burundi. The civil protection police speak of illegal gold miners.

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According to a source on ground, two young gold miners were buried in a hole.

“A landslide caused by runoff carried away piles of mud and surprised the gold miners. They were buried in a hole around ten meters deep. Eight others were seriously injured,” specifies a resident of Myave hill.

A police source indicates that these were illegal gold miners who were often victims of these landslides because they acted outside any legal framework.

“They do not have operating authorization on the various gold mining sites. They do not have adequate protective equipment, they are not affiliated to a health insurance plan and are not members of the legally recognized cooperatives,” laments a police officer on condition of anonymity.

One of the civil protection police officers in this province appeals to gold miners to organize themselves into associations and work transparently to avoid this type of incident which has become commonplace during this period of heavy rain, often leading to natural disasters causing material and even human damage observed in recent times.

For his part, the administrator of Bukinanyana blames these gold miners for whom a certain quantity of gold exploited on the various deposits is not declared, thus escaping the tax authorities.

However, a gold miner speaks of a shared responsibility, emphasizing that the operating permit is extremely expensive, which pushes some of his colleagues to act clandestinely. Instead, he asks the public authorities to lower the deposits made of large amounts required from gold miners, to allow them to exercise their profession in better conditions.

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Gold miners on a site in the province of Cibitoke in the northwest of Burundi