COVID-19 Threatens Livelihood of Female Stone Miners

 

COVID-19 Threatens Livelihood of Female Stone Miners

By Alusine Sesay

The outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic in Sierra Leone has affected every sector of the country’s economic. Even women who are mining stones are not spared by the negative impact of COVID-19. Stone mining becomes livelihood for most women who are not gainfully employed in the formal sector.

Aminata Kamara, 50, a single parent with four school-going kids, said that she resorted to stone mining to support her children years back in the out skirts of the capital Freetown.

She told Premier News that due to the outbreak of Coronavirus in Sierra Leone, trading in stones has become increasingly difficult since building contractors have reduced their workforce and activities to comply with social distancing as ordered by government.

Kamara cited that before COVID-19, sales in stone were adequately good, but she since the outbreak sales has dropped drastically which is affecting her family’s livelihood. “My children and I sometimes go short when we didn’t have sales for the day,” she said.

She noted that before the outbreak of the coronavirus, she had been enjoying influx of customers purchasing granite stones on a daily basis, by building contractors.

She said that since the outbreak she hardly gets a customer per day to purchase even one head pan full of stones.

She complained that the act of breaking stones into smaller pieces is causing her bodily pains, hand fractures and other health problems, and added that she faces challenges to access medical treatment due to her current meager income status.

She explained that she normally pays men to break the larger stones into medium sizes, after which she would break them into the granite shape. She added that transforming the raw material into secondary product entails money, which she did not have in earnest.

“Normally when sales are stiff I cannot provide capital to start another business in complementing my trade and for survival,” she added.

She noted that she made several efforts to be register for the World Bank and Government of Sierra Leone safety Net provided to cushion the economic impact on traders across the country; but “All my efforts were futile. I did not register nor do I receive money because the registration process was biased.”

She mentioned that the prices of stones vary, and it ranges from Le 3,000 to Le 10,000 per head pan, noting that what they would eat for a day depends on their sales.  

“I have been doing stone mining to make ends meet for over 15 years because of my inability to read and write. Stone mining is my last resort to augment my livelihood,” Kamara said.

She cited that because she lost her capital and was unable to pay her rents, she decided to live with her brother at Aberdeen in Freetown where she started to do stone mining for her sustenance and up keep her children.

Mariam Koroma, a leader among stone miners in the east of Freetown said that at Moeba, said that COVID-19 pandemic  is preventing them from making substantial sales and jeopardizing their means of livelihood. She  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 people have scaled down construction of houses due to low remittances and fear of large scale outbreak. 

“Some of our customers have stopped coming to this cite…, we only survive after we have sold stones, but due to coronavirus, we would sometimes stay here for over three months without sale,” Koroma said.

According to Koroma, some of them have been sustaining their families, pay for their children’s education from primary school to University.

A female stone, miner Yeanoh Kamara, is a breadwinner winner of a family of seven. 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 said the news about the dreadful coronavirus has affected their trade and their earnings.

The female miners complained that they are not benefitting from the government social safety net programme which is provided to businesses which are impacted by COVID-19. Each business is provided with Le1.3 million (US$130).

Umaru Samai is the Project Officer of National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA). He said that the Safety Net Project does make provision for stone miners to receive financial support from the government to cushion the impact of the pandemic on their livelihood, but they have be register for them to benefit from it.

He added that the safety Net target four type of people irrespective of their working group from the Ministry of Labour, Ministry of Tourism and the Trade sector. “With the outbreak of COVID-19, the Government of Sierra Leone, World Bank and UNICEF and other development partners put aside US $4 million as contingency funding to support people that had been impacted by the virus seriously,” he said.

Samai noted that the project targeted 29,000 people, adding that because the first phase of the project was successful, the European Union also supported the project with €4.6 million to support petty traders, those within the hospitality industry and worker that were laid off due to COVID-19.

Note: This story was produced with support from Journalists for Human Rights (JHR), through its Mobilizing Media in the Fight Against COVID-19, in partnership with Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ).