Mining of precious stones in Uganda is mostly done by big international companies but you cannot rule out the sizeable number of local people that do their small scale mining, mosltly gold in Mubende. We refer to these as artisanal miners.
Artisanal miners have not had it easy with the government and the bigger companies as they have been going back and forth with each other for a while now.
In August 2017, Bukuya sub-county in Mubende district looked like a war-zone in the eyes of artisanal miners as they woke up to heavy war artillery parked in their fields as they were forcefully evicted. The fields were taken over by an investor trading as Gemstones International.
In March this year, 15 of the 21 groups of artisanal miners, who were evicted from gold mines in Mubende and Kassanda districts, resumed work in their mines after government issued them licenses.
But that’s not enough. In a meeting with the Parliamentary Committee on Natural Resources, these miners said that they lost property and money in billions on the day they were ruthlessly evicted, and they are now seeking compensation, and demanding the investors to give them at least 1 square kilometer of the 144 they currently own.
They also allege that they were tortured in the process, and that the evicting authorities stole and extorted from them.
It should be noted that shortly after the evictions, President Museveni said he had not given the directive but rather had only told the soldiers and other security agencies to be on standby.
Over 20,000 artisanal and small scale miners were affected by the eviction and are now seeking compensation.