MINISTRY of Mines Permanent Secretary Hapenga Kabeta has lamented that while government has been encouraging illegal miners to form cooperatives, most of them are not coming forward. In an interview, Kabeta said government wanted to ensure safe mining through formalisation of mining activities to prevent deaths among small scale miners. “You know, we have issued licences in various parts of the country and we have encouraged those young people who are involved in illegal mining to convert their interests into a cooperative so that they start participating in the mainstream economic activity, and most of those don’t seem to be coming forward. But the programme of government on formalisation is ongoing and it will continue. And one of the reasons...