10 November 2009
Bulawayo — There were fears of a major coal shortage last week after Hwange Colliery Company Limited (HCC) briefly suspended operations at one of its mines that was flooded with water. HCCL's output has already suffered after its dragline was taken off line for a month as it underwent major repairs.
The flooding of the underground mine, which happened after miners tried to dig deeper in search of "good coal", worsened the situation, sources said.
"It dawned on the shift managers that there was something amiss after they saw water coming from underground and filling up the place," said the source:
"They immediately told the workers to suspend work for that day as there was need to deal with the water problem."
Operations were suspended for a few days because the water levels kept rising as the company used water suction equipment to "de-water" the mine.
HCCL spokesperson, Burzil Dube confirmed the development but said they had managed to deal with the crisis.
"There was a small problem at the underground mine. It was discovered that there was water all over the mine and we had to briefly stop work so that the problem could be attended to," Dube said.
However, Dube ruled out fears that the miners had hit a water table, which might make mining on the underground mine more difficult.
"While people may suspect that the miners had hit a water table, we believe it could have been a small water problem. It was not really a big one as we managed to attend to it and bring back mining activities on line.
"At the moment, everything is now going on smoothly and we hope that we will be able to increase the coal output as expected of us," Dube said.
The country's sole producer of coal has already recorded a decline in coal sales to 401 114 (?) during the first half of the year ending June 30 to 862 392 (?) during the same period last year.
The Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority has been one of the most affected by the coal shortages, while other users have resorted to imports.
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