The company, one of 20 companies that were issued with special grants by President Robert Mugabe to explore and extract coal bed methane gas in the wildlife rich area, has completed an exploration EIA amid a trail of environmental damages which has resulted in two water aquifer bursts in the conservancies.
A Bulawayo-based environment consultancy firm, Environment Guardian Service, last month released an EIAt Impact Assessment report claiming that the exploration exercise had been completed with minimum environment degradation. The report, however, did not go down well with the Gwayi Intensive Conservancy Area and the National Parks and Wildlife Authority who accuse the consultancy company of dishonesty and giving the project the go ahead without consulting them. Speaking at a Trans frontier Conservation Area co-coordinating meeting last week, Kaza Zimbabwe National Co-coordinator, Alex Dangare, said the regional tourism body was worried about the fate of the Gwayi-Shangani dam. “Our observation was that this project has a significant impact on the environment and we are not really convinced that the hydrologist who carried out the assessment did a comprehensive job. We are pushing for a complementary process because it is likely that not only the Gwayi River but the Zambezi and subsequently Kariba Dam will be polluted,” said Dangare.
Dangare said Kaza wanted to avoid the Save River situation where there are reports of disastrous poisoning of water bodies by diamond mining companies. During the meeting, it also emerged that Botswana and Angola are against the coal-mining project while Namibia and Zambia have not made their positions clear. The proposed mine site falls under the regional countries’ Trans frontier Conservation Area where no major developments are permissible because of the movement of wild animals between the countries. The area is also a passage for the Presidential elephant herd.
According to the company’s Director, Retired Colonel Charles Mugari, the coal-mining project will create downstream industries such as brick moulding and a fertiliser manufacturing plant. China Africa Sunlight Energy is a joint venture between Chinese conglomerate, Shandong Taishan Sunlight, and Old Stone Investments, an obscure local company highly linked to army generals. The same company is also believed to have some interests in Chiadzwa diamonds.
Post published in: News