Santigie Koroma, a leader among stone miners at Moeba, a community in the east of Freetown, has said on Saturday that, the poor road network to the area prevents them from making substantial sales and jeopardizing their means of livelihood.
He has been in the stone mining business for over 30 years.
By his reckoning, over 300 persons are employed in the stone mining business.
He said that sometimes after laboring and crushing huge rocks into sizes suited for concrete aggregate not a single buyer will show up for a whole day.
Koroma further explained that the sales of stones are slow because buyers prefer to get stones from other communities around Freetown which are easier to access as opposed to Moeba which is mountainous and with roads in poor condition causing drivers not to visit them at the cite frequently as they did before.
“Some of our customers have stopped coming to this cite…, we only survive after we have sold stones, but due to poor road network, we would sometimes stay here for over three months without sale,” Koroma said.
He said that stone mining is a means through which most people inhabiting Moeba acquire an income. According to Koroma, some of them have been sustaining their families, pay for their children’s education from primary school to University.
“Here I was given birth to, and I have also given birth to my own children here. Since my young age when I chose stone mining because I have no other means of sustaining my family. Before I stay in the street begging, I chose to be here,” he said.
He said that they lack tools and that has affected their operations, as opposed to before they used to utilize machines which make work easier for them by breaking stone into smaller pieces.
He said that, since the government has banned the operation of machines they are now using basic tools which are difficult to work with and less effective.
Koroma asked for government’s help to construct the road leading to the area and also assist them with tools in order to ensure effectiveness in their work.
A female stone, miner Yeanoh Kamara, is a breadwinner winner of her family. According to her, she started mining rocks and crushing them down to concrete size pieces for sale because she had no one to help her family.
She buys pieces of rocks which had been extracted and broken into medium sizes by the male stone miners and breaks them into smaller pieces of the sort appropriate for use in concrete aggregate and resell them to their regulars.
“After men have extracted stone from the earth, they would pack them by five hundred, three hundred etc. which we would buy Le 200,000, Le 300,000 etc., according to the nature of the stone. Later, we would cut them into smaller pieces then resell them to our customers. But recently we are not having sales and some of us have decided to abandon the job,” she says. “Everything used to be normal before the outbreak of the Coronavirus, but now our customers are not coming as usual,” she concluded.
By Ibrahim S. Bangura
08/09/2020. ISSUE NO: 7904