Two gold miners were killed by a landslide on Monday May 13th, 2024 on the Myave hill in the Ndora zone in the Bukinanyana commune, Cibitoke province, north-west Burundi. The civil protection police spoke of illegal gold miners.
According to a local source, two young gold miners were buried in a hole.
“A landslide caused by run-off water swept away piles of mud and caught the gold miners by surprise. They were buried in a hole some ten meters deep. Eight others were seriously injured”, explains a resident of Myave hill.
A police source indicated that these were illegal gold miners, who often fall victim to these landslides because they operate outside any legal framework.
“They have no authorization to operate on the various gold mining sites. They don’t have adequate protective equipment, they’re not affiliated to a health insurance scheme and they’re not members of legally recognized cooperatives”, laments a police officer speaking on condition of anonymity.
One of the province’s civil protection police officers appealed to gold miners to organize themselves into associations and work transparently to avoid such incidents, which have become commonplace during this period of heavy rainfall, often leading to natural disasters that have caused material and even human damage in recent times.
For his part, the Bukinanyana administrator blames the gold miners, who fail to declare a certain quantity of the gold mined on their various deposits, thus evading the tax authorities.
However, one goldsmith speaks of a shared responsibility, pointing out that mining permits are enormously expensive, driving some of his colleagues underground. Instead, he calls on the public authorities to reduce the high deposits demanded of gold miners, to enable them to ply their trade in better conditions.
