Maravi

Nkhata accuses small-scale miners of frustrating govt efforts

Nkhata accuses small-scale miners of frustrating govt efforts
By Fridah Zinyama
Friday May 18, 2007 [04:00]

MINISTRY of Mines Permanent Secretary Leonard Nkhata has expressed concern that some small-scale miners are selling their mines to foreign investors. Appearing before the Parliamentary Committee on Economic Issues looking at the legal and policy framework on investment, Nkhata said the move by some small-scale miners to sell their mines was frustrating government’s efforts of empowering the indigenous people.

“Government has reserved ownership of the small-scale mines “artisan mines’ for the people of Zambia but they are either selling them or forming joint ventures with foreigners,” Nkhata said

He said since most Zambians did not have the capacity to invest in big mines, government had made a deliberate policy of selling licences to small mines to locals.
“At the moment we do not have a law stopping such kind of behaviour by the miners,” Nkhata said. “This trend has ended up disadvantaging the miners who form partnerships as they are deprived of profits and cannot progress.”

He said government understood that most miners could not have easy access to finances and that was why a revolving fund had been established for the miners.

“A lot of effort has also been made by government to help finance the small-scale miners who have been complaining of lack of access to finances by setting up the revolving fund for them,” Nkhata said. “The European Union also tried to help the small-scale mining sector by releasing the 16.5 million euros.”

He explained that the miners however could not easily access these funds, which were given to commercial banks by EU because the miners did not have collateral.

And when asked by Mbabala member of parliament Emmanuel Hachipuka what the ministry was doing to improve safety in the mines, Nkhata said the ministry had been seriously under-funded and this had affected their work.

“We want to be more proactive in averting calamities in the mines,” he said. “To this end, we need to have more motor vehicles that will enable our inspectors to move in the different provinces of the country.”

He said last year, the ministry only had four mines inspectors and one vehicle due to lack of adequate funding from government.

“Engineers have left the public for the private sector and we had since put a strong campaign for more funding which will help us employee more personnel and buy vehicles,” Nkhata said.

He said since then, accidents in the mines had reduced from 81 to 18 from 2005 to 2006, respectively.

Labels: MINING

posted by MrK @ 4:46 AM