By Brighton Muronzereyi and Rutendo Ngara STAFF WRITERS
FIFTEEN miners who had been trapped underground at Redwing Mine in Manicaland, since Thursday, were yesterday rescued after a successful, but risky mission.
Authorities confirmed that all the 15, who had been initially thought to be 11, were physically fit. A relieved Manicaland minister of State, Misheck Mugadza, told the Daily News that the rescue operation had yielded positive results.
“We managed to rescue the team. It’s a miracle. God is good. All of them are physically fit. We were retrieving at least one person every 15 minutes,” Mugadza said.
This came after the government and other experts had embarked on a risky rescue mission to extricate the 15 miners, who had been trapped underground for nearly four days.
An unstable environment had stalled the rescue mission for three days, before a crack team of experts including engineers from Metallon Corporation — the owners of Redwing Mine and whose employees were trapped — successfully brought the 15 miners alive.
This was after acting Local Government minister, July Moyo, had announced the activation of rescue teams to deal with the incident at the weekend.
“In responding to this unfortunate accident, the government has immediately activated civil protection structures to deal with the critical matter of search and rescue at the mine. “As the rescue efforts are underway, the minister of Mines (Zhemu Soda) has since directed Metallon Gold to suspend operations at the mine.
“The ministry of Mines and Mining Development is leading a team of experts, including from Metallon Gold and Freda Rebecca Gold Mine of Bindura. “For the avoidance of doubt and contrary to some unsubstantiated reports circulating on social media platforms, the trapped miners are employees of Metallon Gold,” Moyo said.
This also came after Zhemu had confirmed that the miners had been trapped after a mineshaft collapsed on them. “Cause of the collapse of the mine shaft is suspected to be an earth tremor, whose source is yet to be ascertained. The miners are suspected to have entered the mine through different shafts,” Zhemu told a press conference last Thursday.
