Africa-Press – Zambia. The government has given 90 days amnesty to small scale and artisanal mines to formalise and legalise their operations by obtaining mining licenses. Minister of Mines and Minerals Development, Paul Kabuswe, says the 90 days amnesty will help to curtail all illegal miners who are involved in mining various minerals, including gold, gemstone, copper and many others in different parts of the country.
Mr. Kabuswe warns that any small scale and artisanal miner who will be found operating illegally after the ninety days amnesty will be prosecuted. He was speaking at a media briefing today in Lusaka where he announced the 90 days amnesty which starts today, October 17, 2022 up to January 2023.
“We want to curtail any illegalities in the mining sector especially among the small-scale miners and the artisan miners who are involved in mining various minerals across the country,” he said.
He explained that this move has been taken following the allocation of funds to the sector in the proposed 2023 national budget for the formalisation of the small-scale and artisanal mining sector.
“Therefore, we encouraged small scale miners to form cooperatives in order to help them operate in a systematic and formal way so that they can gain good profit,’’ said Mr. Kabuswe.
And Mr. Kabuswe has announced that the cadastre department will be reopened on Wednesdays 19, 2022 for licensing of all mines following approval by Cabinet.
Mr. Kabuswe stated that the Cabinet also approved that every mining company will be restricted to an initial number of five licenses. Those that have more than five licenses will be required to justify why they should be given more licenses.
He said his ministry will slowly put in place a standard statutory instrument (SI) that will restrict the number of licenses that a mining company should obtain to avoid speculations by those with too many licenses.
‘’We as a government are not going to allow any particular individual or company to have 40 or 50 licenses alone. Going forward that is not going to be accepted because we want sanity in the mining sector,’’ said Mr. Kabuswe. He explained that the reason for the restriction to five licenses only is because a lot of licenses were used for purposes of speculating.
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