ANA reports that Deputy Mineral Resources Minister Godfrey Oliphant on Thursday conceded that efforts to reach out and compensate former mineworkers, many of whom from neighbouring countries, have not been satisfactory.  

In his keynote address at the Southern Africa Trust summit on social security and compensation benefits, he indicated that government was exploring ways of expediting the identification and payment to the former miners across the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC).  Oliphant said:  "We do have a system that is working [to compensate the former mineworkers] but it needs to be perfected.  We need to go on.  But this is not enough ... from the 100,000 people that we have identified, we have paid less than 10,000.  This means there is a problem."  Some of the major bottle necks apparently emanated from the former mineworkers not having the requisite documents.

• Read this report by Jonisayi Maromo in full at The Citizen

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