OWN CORRESPONDENT, Dar Es Salaam | Thursday
SMALL-scale gold miners in the Geita district, in northern Tanzania are seeking compensation from Ashanti Goldfields after claiming that they were forcibly evicted from their mines.
Local miners in the region are said to have written a letter to the president describing how the Geita district commissioner with a detachment of armed police ordered them to vacate the Katoma mining area and later bulldozed their living and working structures.
According to the letter, in another incident the district commissioner also had the Nyamkanga mining area flattened, filling up the mining pits with sand.
When the miners demanded compensation the letter stated that they were arrested and told by the district authorities that compensation was out of the question, as the Nyamkanga area now belonged to the Ashanti Mining Company
The Ashanti Mining Company’s liaison officer Keiza Aaron said that her company had followed government procedures in compensating claimants. Local leaders had drawn up lists of claimants that were confirmed by the Mwanza regional authorities.
Ashanti has paid compensation to approximately 900 villagers that amounted to about Tshs 3.4bn (U$4.2m) and was 140 percent above the actual value of their property in the Geita area, said Aaron.