State suspends gold mining licences

GOLD mining licences for small-scale miners have been suspended following an increase in illegal mine activities happening in different parts of the country, Ministry of Mines and Minerals Development Permanent Secretary, Paul Chanda has said.

Mr Chanda said Government was concerned with the increase in the number of illegal gold mining activities in different parts of the country, adding that this prompted the ministry to suspend them.

In an interview with the Daily Nation, Mr Chanda explained that small-scale gold miners had been invaded by illegal miners both local and foreign dealers. The suspension will help evaluate and try to determine the performance of the licences throughout the country.

“As you may be aware, these mines are in different parts of the country and have been invaded by illegal miners. We are trying to clean up these areas. There are foreign gold dealers and our illegal mine dealers.

“What is sad is that those licences that were given in these areas, a lot of them have not been active if they were active we would not have had illegal miners,” he said.

Mr Chanda said only after the ministry assesses the performance of each and every gold licence throughout the country will they be able to issue new licences only to those who complied, adding that those who did not risked their licences being revoked.

“We will assess the performance of each and every licence after that we will go and inform the owners whether we will go ahead and cancel those who are not compliant and those who have been trying and doing well will continue to operate as normal,” he said.

Mr Chanda said he was hopeful that the exercise would start as soon as the money from the Treasury was made available to the ministry, so that they could deploy security in all the small-scale gold mines in the country but he was not certain how long the process would take.