High malnutrition among artisanal gold miners in eastern DR Congo
Thursday February 24 2022
Men work in a gold mine in DR Congo. Exposure to violence and food shortage have led to malnutrition among communities of artisanal gold miners in eastern DR Congo. PHOTO | FILE | NMG
In Maniema, eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), gold deposits are plenty. But the deposits are being extracted by people who are malnourished, exposing the scale of food shortage in a region full of valuable minerals.
Medical charity group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says it treated 2,460 children with malnutrition in 2021 in this region, particularly in the town of Salamabila. And cases of death have increased among children affected by acute malnutrition.
“There are different factors behind the increase in malnutrition,” said Jean-Marie Kamungu, a nurse at MSF-run Salamabila General Hospital.
The town is generally populated by poor people.
“On the one hand, gold mining is considered the most important activity for survival, but it is not easy to work in artisanal gold production. On the other hand, people are afraid to go to the fields for fear of violence. As a result, due to lack of resources, children are fed only one or two types of food, which is not enough,” adds Jean-Marie Kamungu.
The figure of children may sound low but Dr Pierrot Yale, the attending physician in the Intensive Nutritional Treatment Unit of the central health zone office, says it reflects a prevalent problem – that figure is an outrageous 70 percent of children who visit the clinics.
The charity group says it has been putting ears to the ground, using a team of 112 staffers known as ‘preventive and curative' community health workers to visit homes and monitor children’s health.
From July to December 2021, the team at the Salamabila General Referral Hospital treated a total of 398 children, under the age of six, for acute and severe malnutrition.
A major problem in the town of Salamabila is that artisanal gold diggers try to enter areas designated for industrial scale mining. And often, they are met with a brutal police who sometimes use live ammunition.
According to figures from the Small-scale Mining Support and Mentoring Service (SAEMAPE), the DRC has around 2,500,000 artisanal miners. Except that artisanal workers are not allowed to mine in industrial zones.
Since 2018, when the Mining Code formally recognised artisanal mining as a legal venture, more people have joined in, only to be rebuffed by police guarding conglomerates. In fact, the Mining Code only allows artisanal miners organised in cooperative societies.
All that plays into food shortage.
In Salamabila, tensions around the industrial zones coveted by artisanal workers have intensified.
“As the conflict has intensified, the impact on local residents has increased. The local population has been exposed to violence and driven from their homes, leading to a deterioration in their social and health status, including increased levels of malnutrition among children,” according to the MSF.
Michaël Kalonda, a member of a mining cooperative for artisanal miners, says the government must help provide a balance.
“We think that we need the intervention of the Head of State because we are carrying out actions and we have not been successful. That's why we want the president's involvement,” he told The EastAfrican.
“The local officials tell us that, at the moment, we cannot look for gold here, whereas for us it is this activity that gives us a living. We are told that consultations are to be held with the Prime Minister. But it has been months and there is still no solution,” the artisanal miners said in a recent petition. In DRC, men, women and children are involved in this activity.
According to the DRC's Mining Code, the authorisation of artisanal mining obliges public authorities to create artisanal mining zones. However, almost four years after the new mining law was put in place, these zones have still not been created.
Paul Mabolia Yenga, Director General of the Technical Coordination and Mining Planning Unit, says lack of funds has hampered creation of artisanal mining zones which would have prevented confrontations and violence.
According to the Ministry of Mines, in 2021, just about 19.09kg gold was exported by artisanal miners, worth just under $1 million.
The Ministry of Mines estimates that artisanal gold production in the DRC is between 20 and 30 tonnes per year.
But according to mining transparency watchdog PACT, nine in every ten kilos of artisanal gold production is smuggled.
Still, an unsteady mining sector could be fuelling malnutrition.