SABC News reports that the Northern Cape Artisanal Small Scale Miners organisation is assisting illegal diamond miners in the Namaqualand region to obtain mining permits.  

The move will eventually assist miners in Port Nolloth and Springbok in managing their own cooperatives and to legally buy and sell diamonds.  Artisanal miners in Kimberley obtained their mining permits from the Department of Mineral Resources in June.  The organisation’s Chelle Goliath said that the same could be done for Namaqualand’s current illegal miners, viz.:  “We get the names of people that are busy mining; we get all their documents.  There are usually 10 people per cooperative, so we can end up with 40 cooperative(s), 50 cooperative(s), depending on the amount of people.  The first cooperative was submitted already for Namaqualand.  What we’re now doing is having a look at the GIS (geographic information system) system to see what land different people are mining on, so we can determine ownership of the land.”

• This short report by Refilwe Mekoa is at SABC News

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