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Bulyanhulu deaths back in public domain
2005-09-22 08:23:19
By Joseph Shayo, Kahama
The unresolved mystery of the deaths of artisanal gold miners at Bulyanhulu in Kahama District has become a major election campaign issue with CUF presidential candidate Prof Ibrahim Lipumba promising to revisit it should he wrest power from CCM.
The cause of the deaths, which a number of people in the outgoing government would rather the matter was swept under the carpet, remains unresolved todate, despite allegations that they were clubbed to death by government officials.
The murderers, it was also alleged, stole the minerals (mainly gold) they had mined.
Prof Lipumba triggered bitter memories of the deaths when he told thousands of voters at Bukombe in Kahama that there was a deliberate move by the government to interfere with the investigations.
The 2001 tragedy, in which between 50 and 100 people reportedly died, remains an emotional issue in Kahama and Prof Lipumba was clearly touching on raw emotions when he implicated senior people in the CCM government.
He said that the failure by the government to get to the heart of the matter was ’’suspect’’ because it has the machinery and resources to investigate the issue conclusively.
Investigations into the deaths by both international and local probe teams have yielded varied conclusions, with the most comprehensive saying the miners perished when the ground above them sagged and trapped them underground.
It has also been alleged that the miners were killed by hoodlums hired by one of the firms that had been given the go-ahead to engage in large-scale commercial mining.
But in one the most baffling tale of events over the deaths, not a single relative of the dead has ever come up to claim any of the bodies, let alone ask for compensation from the government.
Opposition parties have in the past charged that the government forced the miners’ relatives not to broach the issue lest they face reprisals.
But Prof Lipumba revisited the issue, saying the matter must be investigated and relatives of the dead be compensated.
He said locals must be given top priority in the management of the mining industry, whose policies, he said, are tailored to suit the whims of foreign miners.
He accused CCM of short-changing the artisanal miners after it legally gave the fields to small-scale miners. He said that in a strange turn of events, the government re-acquired the fields and dished them out to foreign firms.
’’What is even more surprising is that foreign investors are mining without having prospecting licences after local small-scale and legitimate miners were locked out of the goldmines,’’ he claimed.
Prof Lipumba charged that foreign firms employ foreigners to do unskilled jobs that can be done by locals.
He said, while the wage differentials between a foreigner and a Tanzanian is skewed in favour of the former, locals were not given equal access to certain basic rights such as healthcare and working gear.
He promised that a CUF government would look afresh at the policies governing the mining sector so that they respond to the needs of the country and the local people.
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