Midlands based cement manufacturing company, Sino-Zimbabwe on Friday breathed fire as a high powered board of the Environmental Management Agency (EMA) walked out of a meeting in protest over “lack of seriousness” on the part of senior management.

Top management were reportedly said to have attended a board meeting in China the previous night but it however emerged during the “embarrassing”  meeting with the company’s junior managers, who failed to adequately address the board’s concerns that the General Manager and other top officials were actually in Harare and not in China.

After an embarrassing five minutes in which the junior officers were “mum” when asked to explain to the board what environmental concerns they had addressed in their Environmental Action Plan, the board led by Mrs Fannie Mutepfa quickly resolved to call senior management to Harare for a hearing, before leaving in a huffy.

“We want to make it clear to you that as EMA board we take our work seriously and as such with this kind of behaviour from senior management we are left with no option but to summon them to a hearing in Harare,” charged Mutepfa, who is also the board chairperson for the Environmental Protection Committee.

Other board members at the meeting included Mr Irvine Kunene, also deputy Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Environment, Mrs Mutsa Chasi, EMA Director General and Petronella Shoko, a board member.

The high powered board team walked out of the boardroom ignoring invitations by the staff to “have lunch” which had already been served on the table during the few minutes of “unfruitful” deliberations.

The Chinese owned cement giant was this early August shutdown by EMA following several complaints by the surrounding community of serious pollution of water sources and plants through discharge of cement dust, raw sewage and used oil in streams that feed water bodies.

The company was however reopened after serious negotiations with EMA, in which they promised to meet the targets laid in their Environmental Management Plan.

During a tour of the company’s garage, which is some few kilometers from the company’s premises, where the plant is located, the board noted that the cement giant had made “notable improvements” in renovating toilets, constructing a septic tank and a water oil filtering system to curb discharging raw sewage and used oil in the nearby streams “but fell short” of addressing the discharge of cement dust in the environment.

“In terms of international standards on the control of emissions Sino-Zimbabwe is in the red zone and a lot still needs to be done on the electro-precipitator  which is spewing heavy cement dust in the 20km radius of the plant,” said EMA Provincial Environmental Manager, Benson Basera.

Reports also indicate that when it is not raining the cement dust covers everything in the 20 km radius that even trees become “stony white” covered in dust.

It is also understood management have been hostile to the EMA provincial officials each time they are called to task over this serious environment catastrophe.

In a November EMA report on the cement company, the environmental agency noted that Sino-Zimbabwe “complied 75 percent with the order (EMA order)” but that “performance if ranked in relation to risk reduction, nothing has been done since high risk aspect of dust emission received very little and/or no attention as of August 2009.

“The company is concentrating on low risk aspects such as building of fuel storage tanks rather than reducing dust emission levels. It is against this background that EMA employ stiffer penalties against SINO come 31 December 2009.”

The report further blasted the cement giant for abusing the “Polluter Pay Principle” instead employing  the “Pay to Pollute Principle.”

Before it’s visit to Sino-Zimbabwe, the EMA board had also toured a chrome mine belonging to  ZOL pvt ltd, a company owned by  a Mr Zheng, a Chinese, at Guburie Chrome Washing plant, 10 km from Sino- Zimbabwe.

The mine  situated in a cattle ranching farm belonging to Mr Charles Hartley became a source of scrutiny from the board as it emerged that proper procedures were not followed in its construction. The washing plant, sited 500km from Mr Hartley’s farm house is in sticky mud and no engineering expertise was sort in constructing the slime ponds. It is situated less than 100m from the nearby a Guburie river raising concern of toxins discharge.

“Recently the company was fined a spot fine of US300 after one of the slime ponds busted flooding the surrounding environment,” confided an EMA official during the tour.

He added: “The slime from the ponds contains chromium which if not properly handled will spill into nearby rivers, thereby contaminating sources of water.”

The chrome which had a Friday EMA deadline failed to meet most of its Environment Action Plan targets.

But EMA board members had caucused soon after the tour they resolved to extend the deadline by a further two weeks failure of which “we will close the mine,” said Mrs Mutepfa.

“The alluvial chrome mining we are witnessing started about two years ago.  We don’t know it here and it is coming with some  people from other places. This is also happening in other places such as Mutorashanga and Penhalonga and we should be very cautious as such mining activities have serious repercussions on the environment.

“Your deadline for satisfying the board was today. You made attempts and we thank you for that but not everything has been adhered to. As environmentalists we are very concerned with the situation here. This is a flood plain and we take note that your slime ponds do not have bunded walls. When rivers flood water flows here washing with it toxins.

“Board members here have been generous to extend by just two weeks for you to build a wall on the slime ponds. Come after two weeks and no progress has been made we will close,” she charged.