All over the country, small-scale miners lower themselves into holes up to 25m deep, break rocks with hammers and pan for gold using buckets of water. But the largely unregulated sector goes untaxed and has other problems such as use of toxic mercury and cyanide, as well as child labour.
Efforts to regulate it included the creation of a national agency for artisanal miners that would enable their output to be monitored and improve traceability, Idani said. Another agency for investigating tax fraud in the gold sector had been given more resources to crack down on cheats, he said.
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