PMRC CALLS FOR POLICY TO REGULATE ARTISANAL MINERS
POLICY Monitoring and Research Centre (PMRC) Executive Director, Sydney Mwamba has urged Government to put in place policy measures to regulate artisanal miners.
Mr Mwamba said a clear policy to regulate both large-scale mining operations and artisanal miners is required and also to ensure formalisation of artisanal miners.
“I think that you may be aware that Government sometimes wants to be as careful as possible so that once measures are put in place, they actually avoid a lot of back and forth movements. “So when you are coming up with a policy, we need to be as consultative as possible and that takes a little bit of time,” Mr Mwamba said. He said formulating a separate policy for artisanal miners would enhance transparency and allow for more cooperatives to be registered.
“This sub-sector inclusive the large-scale mining operations, requires that some of these reforms that are going on quickly get to be actualised so that the mining sector begins to regain its confidence and ensure that productivity is enhanced and of course ensure that productivity contributes to the vision of ensuring that Zambia gets to a point where we will be able to have the three million metric tonnes of copper actualised, especially in the copper industry,” Mr Mwamba said.
He said the formalisation process should be expedited to enable Government account for minerals being mined by artisanal miners.
He added that it was high time that Government tapped into the potential of artisanal miners as they had the capacity to contribute positively to economic growth.