When Chief Ng\u2019onga of Balaka warned government to stop issuing mining licences to companies without first consulting communities and traditional leaders in areas where the mining activities are taking place, many people thought it was out of mere spite.<\/p>\n
Out of ill will, indeed, for the aged man could not be gainfully employed in the industry while some people from his village were getting menial jobs!<\/p>\n
But hold your horses, the chief was right to a point.<\/p>\n
Ng\u2019onga is on record telling The Daily Times <\/em>that companies were flocking to his area without his knowledge and disrupting the environment apart from shunning corporate social responsibility (CSR) that would benefit the community.<\/p>\n \u201cHow can government allocate the entire hill to companies to be engaging in mining activities without informing us first so that we are aware of what is happening,\u201d Ng\u2019onga says.<\/p>\n He says, as a result, there has been no meaningful CSR activity that has happened in his area although mining companies have exploited limestone on Ng\u2019onga Hills for decades now.<\/p>\n Ng\u2019onga further says because government has not decentralised the mining sub-sector, some companies refuse to help when approached for CSR activities which prompted him to chase them away from his area.<\/p>\n Davie Jawadi, Balaka District Lands Officer, in an interview said there are no mining officers at district level because the Mines and Minerals Act of 1981 vested all the powers on mining on the Executive and it was difficult to handle mining disputes on the ground while directives and licences come from Capital Hill.<\/p>\n \u201cDisputes between communities and companies involved in mining will never end until the Mines and Minerals Act of 1981 is repealed and amended to take into cognizance the genuine expectations of communities surrounding mining activities,\u201d Jawadi says.<\/p>\n He says mining is not a benign activity and it is virtually impossible to extract minerals from the earth and process them without impacting, in various degrees, on the air, land and water, as well as the social cost of disruption of marriages by truck drivers and increased petty promiscuity.<\/p>\n While government is busy trying everything possible to diversify the economy after agriculture has seemingly let the country down, mining is an area that has remained largely unexploited.<\/p>\n However, in its quest to diversify the economy, government ought to tread carefully to avoid making another public blunder like that of Kayelekera Uranium Mine because the indigenous people do not derive any meaningful benefits accruing from mining.<\/p>\n Ng\u2019onga Hills in Balaka is endowed with large quantities of limestone \u2013 useful in cement production, quarry mining, lime, potty, agriculture lime production and paint-making ingredients, among others, but sadly locals have benefited almost nothing.<\/p>\n Qadria Muslim Association of Malawi (Qmam) is one organisation raising \u2018necessary community noise\u2019 in the fight against exclusion of local Malawian communities in the mining activities.<\/p>\n Qmam, which is implementing a Tonse Tipindule mining governance project funded by Tilitonse, aimed at promoting increased inclusion, accountability and responsiveness in Malawi\u2019s mining sector, says people naturally feel entitled to some benefits from mining as it is from their land that the companies make their business.<\/p>\n Qmam Programmes Officer, Biswas Ishmael, says mining should primarily aim at changing lives of people living within the mining area who have great expectations of CSR programmes.<\/p>\n Ishmael says there has never been any meaningful development anywhere in the world in the mining sector when the community is excluded and no any accountability on the part of the mining company exists.<\/p>\n \u201cThere can never be effective relationship between the community and the mining company if the company does not sit down with community to appreciate problems haunting it and help in developing the area they are doing their mining activities in,\u201d Ishmael says.<\/p>\n He says the proposed revised Mines and Minerals Act of 1981 that government is consulting on should seriously consider expectations of people living within mining areas.<\/p>\n He says people would gain from minerals in their areas if government regulates the extraction of mineral resources in the country through adherence to sustainable development principles in order to benefit the economy and promote the economic growth of the country.<\/p>\n Ishmael says the country\u2019s legislators are not helping matters when they take ages to enact the proposed new Mines and Minerals Bill as the current mining law is perpetuating the cycle of poverty and helplessness in as far as mining is concerned in the country.<\/p>\n Roderick Mateauma, Balaka District Commissioner (DC), says Balaka, like many districts endowed with minerals, has pockets of companies operating in mining activities without duly following procedures.<\/p>\n \u201cI know there was a company that came to the area lying it had a licence and it did not consult the community which enraged Chief Ng\u2019onga but that happened because we have delayed to enact enabling legislation to regulate the mining industry in the country,\u201d Mateauma says.<\/p>\n He says the absence of mining officers at district level leaves a gap through which other shrewd entrepreneurs manipulate the system, thereby bringing chaos into the mining industry.<\/p>\n Thokozani Mapemba, Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) Economic Justice Coordinator, says they are an interested party in mining issues because they want to help government prioritise rights of the common person when making mining deals and worked hard to partner Qmam with funding from Tilitonse Fund.<\/p>\n \u201cGovernment is apparently looking for an alternative to tobacco, in particular, and farming in general, which has let the country down, so mining has got an existing potential that Malawi can capitalise on and at the same time mining impacts very much on people\u2019s lives,\u201d Mapemba says.<\/p>\n He says the current policy governing mining in Malawi does not encourage transparency, hence a lot of mining deals have been struck before but there is nothing to show for in the mining industry.<\/p>\n The second phase of Tonse Tipindule project started in November, 2015 and will run up to April, 2017 with K31million funding channeled through NCA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Chief Ng\u2019onga of Balaka warned government to stop issuing mining licences to companies without first consulting communities and traditional leaders in areas where the mining activities are taking place, many people thought it was out of mere spite. Out of ill will, indeed, for the aged man could not be gainfully employed in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":27465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27462"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27466,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27462\/revisions\/27466"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}