Thanks to the help of a Primrose resident, the GCN has uncovered an illegal mining operation.
The mining site is located behind a park, on the corner of Pine and Wit streets, in Marlands.
GCN journalists visited the area to investigate, on Wednesday, and found a total of 15 illegal miners hard at work.
The men, who are all believed to be Mozambican, currently reside in the Jerusalem and Angelo informal settlements, in Boksburg, and have been mining at the Marlands site, undetected, for a number of months.
When asked what they hope to find in the soil surrounding the site, one of the miners said: “We find gold in the soil.”
The men on this site realise what they are doing is illegal, but say they “would rather mine illegally to try and make a living, than steal from others”.
This operation is destroying the environmentand the miners are putting their own safety and health at risk, due to the fact that they use water filled with sewage from a continuous sewage leak in the area for their mining operationsand they are digging deep holes, which could lead to the injury of themselves or other people walking through the area.
The matter has been brought to the attention of the Primrose police.
