Mining & Trade News

The Mining and Mineral Resources Regulatory Authority (MMRA) says the process of installing mining officers at every district will only target those districts where mining activities are taking place.  

In an interview with Mining and Trade Review, Director General for MMRA Samuel Sakhuta said the plan was to decentralize all districts but due to limited resources they will only start with districts experiencing an upsurge in mining activities.

Sakhuta said MMRA will fast track the process following a growing number of issues reaching his desk, which he feels would have been dealt with at district level.

He said: “To enhance collaboration between MMRA and district councils on mining activities within their jurisdictions, the Authority plans to recruit adequate staff to work with district councils.  

“We will collaborate on mining activities to ensure effective regulation and oversight at the local level,” Sakhuta said.

Miners including those in Artisanal Small-scale Mining (ASM) from the mining districts walk long distances to have documents processed at the Department of Mines offices in Lilongwe, Blantyre and Mzuzu; which necessitates the recruitment of the District Mines Officers.

The officers are also required to address the information gap in rural communities on medium to large scale mining projects in their localities which result in prolonged tension and conflicts between communities and the mining companies.

Commenting on the development, Programs Coordinator for Natural Resources Justice Network (NRJN) Joy Chabwera said it has been a long time ever since the network started advocating that the Ministry deploys officers in districts.

Chabwera advised the Authority to ensure that it deploys competent officers with strong Public Relations (PR) attributes in the districts to deal with the existing problems.

He said: “This is not new. It has been long overdue. Since 2019 we have been asking the Ministry of Mining to deploy mining officers in the hotspot districts but this never happened till now.”

“For MMRA, we can give them the benefit of a doubt that they are new so perhaps they will deliver to their promises.”

“But here is an advice to them, they should deploy competent technocrats to handle this work not just anybody”

“They should also consider having a strong PRO to be able to respond to queries and share information to communities in areas where mining is taking place.”

Chabwera also urged the Authority to fulfill its promise to ensure that the process is fast tracked since it has been long since government started singing the song.

However, Mining Expert and Geoscientist Ignatius Kamwanje said though the development is a good move, restricting the process to well-known mining districts while sidelining other districts will hinder progress of some projects especially ongoing exploration activities.

Kamwanje, therefore, asked the government to consider pumping more funds to the Authority to ensure that it has the capacity to deploy officers in all districts..

He said: “Sidelining other districts will deny other districts to develop in terms of mining because some districts have ongoing exploration activities only.”

“It will be good to level the ground by establishing offices in all districts.”

“The government should consider pumping more funds to MMRA to cater for such a process.”

A number of districts across the country have unresolved issues between communities and mining companies to do with environmental degradation, land compensation, legal issues, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and health issues. 

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