BGI repairs soil testing machines

Towards the end of 2021 and beginning of this year, cases of people, mostly Zimbabweans, who were charged with unlawful prospecting of minerals without a permit or licence authorising them to do so, were withdrawn because of lack of evidence.

The withdrawal of the cases dissatisfied the police who said after much effort and the resources they used to arrest the illegal miners, the cases end up being withdrawn at the Francistown Magistrate’s Courts because soil testing machines that BGI uses to test the soil samples that the accused were alleged to have been mining were malfunctioning. Prosecutors from the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) were in equal measure incensed about the withdrawal of the cases following their efforts to prosecute.