I am a gold miner. My father was a miner, my forefathers were miners. In my community, where the majority of people work in informal, small-scale mining, we go deep underground into the old colonial pits, drilling, hauling and blasting rocks. We use simple technology, basic equipment and locally made tools. Most miners still use mercury and cyanide to extract gold from the ore – often without training or safety equipment – as they can’t afford safer processing techniques. It is backbreaking, dirty and treacherous work all for tiny grains of precious metal. In 28 years of working in gold mining I have seen many people die, including close friends. It was hard, a bitter experience, but it drove me to join MICODEPRO, a co-operative which strives to formalise small-scale mining by improving regulation and making mines safer.
In my county, Migori, artisanal mining is the main economic activity on which 1 million people - three quarters of the population - rely to make a living. Men, women and children work in mining. The work is dangerous. People risk their lives in the pits from collapsing walls, falling debris, sometimes drowning in underground water or suffocating from carbon monoxide. And mercury is a silent killer; it doesn’t kill instantly but it is lethal.
Every month someone will die. But not in MICODEPRO. Since 2012 there have been no deaths in our mines, because we no longer work in such hazardous conditions. Since the organisation partnered with Fairtrade we’ve undergone many trainings to improve health and safety, we’ve made the mines stronger with proper timbering and we use protective gloves and safer equipment.
MICODEPRO is also addressing issues such as child labour, gender equality and the environmental impact of mining. In my community there are many widows and orphans who nobody cares for. When a man dies in a pit in most cases his children have to leave school and go to the mines. We want children to get an education instead of crushing ore and inhaling toxic gases. Child labour is absolutely prohibited in MICODEPRO mines.
Mining is a hard job but because it has been the traditional economic activity in the area since colonial times, regardless of the dangers it involves, we have no other alternative. That is why it is so important to overcome the hazards of the job and improve regulation.
This is vital not just for our community but also the environment. Mining has contaminated land, rivers and caused air pollution too, as poisons leach into the atmosphere from explosives and burning amalgams. When it rains, water flowers into the river and the animals drink the polluted water and get infected. The same animals are eaten by the community.
Miners face other hazards too. We must pay 40% of our output to the mine’s landlord, who keeps contracts short and reserves the right to renegotiate. To pay for equipment hire, miners often have to do a shift for nothing. At MICRODEPRO we are working as a collective so we can plan for the future, save and lend money to members to prevent them from becoming indebted to middlemen. If we get really organised, regionally, the miners might even gain more negotiating power with traders or site owners. Working as a group has been transformational. Previously, each and every miner worked on his own. Today, we process our ore together, we sell as a group and we get an equal share.
MICODEPRO is among nine groups of miners to engage in Fairtrade’s pilot project in east Africa, and so far it is succeeding. The training we’ve received has also helped to improve production, so we can produce purer gold that will enable us to compete in the market. Previously, we recovered only 45% of the gold contained in the ore we mine and the rest was wasted. We hope to upgrade to at least 90% now that we have been trained in more efficient processing.
If small-scale mining becomes well managed and more professional it can sustain and improve lives and that is why at MICODEPRO we are working to completely change the industry. Here in the UK, I’ve travelled to Scotland, Bradford and London meeting campaigners and businesses, to raise awareness of how gold is mined and encouraging people to buy Fairtrade gold, as part of the organisation’s I DO campaign which is mobilising a network of activists around the country. This week I’ve met many individuals working in the jewellery industry who are making a good living from the raw materials that we small scale miners produce. It is my hope that one day we will have a greater share of this wealth, and in the future our children can work as engineers and professionals in the industry.
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