AfricaPress-Tanzania: STAKEHOLDERS in the mining sector have appealed to the government to continue financing artisanal miners by providing them with sufficient grants to enable them to sustain their businesses amidst the ongoing global battle against Covid- 19.
To achieve this, the stakeholders further advised the government through the Ministry of Minerals to use part of the remaining funds from the Sustainable Management of Mineral Resources Project (SMMRP) for the purpose.
According to the Controller and Auditor General (CAG) Report for 2017/18 as of June 30, 2018, at least 1.4bn/- was still deposited in Tanzania Investment Bank (TIB). But the CAG said there was no information on the deposit of the money.
The amount is part of the 6.9bn/- issued by the World Bank to the Minerals Ministry (2015/16) for the implementation of the SMMRP which aims at building the capacity of the government to manage the mining sector, improve the socioeconomic impact of large-scale and small-scale mining for Tanzania and Tanzanians and enhance private and foreign investments.
Under the SMMRP which ended in December 2018, artisanal miners in the country benefited from the grants.
In line with this, the stakeholders requested the government to use the remaining funds of the closed WB project for addressing the existing market crisis facing the ASMs in the country and ensure they had access to finance.
In its recent analysis for 2020/21 the Ministry of Minerals budget, Haki Rasilimali— a civil society organisation advocating minerals, oil and gas extraction has requested the ministry to reallocate grants previously intended for small-scale miners development to empower the ASMs as the sector players continue feeling the pinch of the coronavirus pandemic.
The outbreak of Covid- 19 pandemic has affected all sectors of the economy in the country, including the mining sector as the governments across the world have imposed global travel restrictions to curtail the spread of the novel coronavirus which has affected 210 countries.
“The government halted the issuance of grants to ASMs because the majority of beneficiaries lacked requisite qualifications. One of the requirements was that the beneficiary must submit his or her bank account statement to the government and indicate previous mineral business transactions, which the majority didn’t have,” said Mr Nicomedes Kajungu, General Secretary of the National Union of Mine and Energy W orkers of Tanzania (Numet).
He added that the construction of mineral markets in various parts of the country would boost mineral businesses in line with financial support to smallscale miners.
For her part, General- Secretary of Tanzania W omen Miners Association (Tawoma) Salma Kundi has also requested the government to continue issuing the grants to the ASMs as intended despite the fact that the WB project timeline has expired.
According to the Ministry of Minerals’s data, as of July 2018 and February 2019, the Mining Commission had issued at least 4, 497 mining licences to the ASMs in the country.
