SOME 700 small-scale industrial miner stakeholders are meeting today to mine out challenges facing the sub sector, especially on safety, finance and business education.

The two-day meeting organised by State Mining Corporation (Stamico) will be also used to launch a new strategy to provide safety, financial and business market education to the miners.

Stamico Managing Director, Dr Venance Mwasse, said the meeting will discuss the best methods to mine industrial minerals and how to access finance and repayment.

"We want to know specific challenges they face and how best to address them," said Dr Mwasse, yesterday.

The idea behind calling the meeting is also to link artisanal miners with geologists and other experts to provide them with the best mining and marketing knowledge to uplift their business output.

Tanzania Women Miners Association (TAWOMA), General Secretary, Ms Salma Ernest said that the meeting is historic.

"We hope this multi sectorial meeting to address our challenges, such as capital and market, which have not been addressed for long time. We need to work closely with service providers like TRA (Tanzania Revenue Authority) as well," she said.

The Confederation of Tanzania Industries (CTI), Executive Director, Mr Leodegar Tenga, said that the event aims to complement the government's efforts to build an industrial economy that uses local raw materials.

"The mission is to look at the challenges; why factories do not use locally available raw materials," stressed Mr Tenga.

STAMICO is a wholly owned government enterprise under the Ministry of Minerals.