Mozambique: NGOs want Nagonha mining suspended until ‘irregularities’ dealt with

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Mozambique: NGOs want Nagonha mining suspended until ‘irregularities’ dealt with

7:00 CAT | 12 Apr 2018

Haiyu mining operation in Nagonha, May 2016. © Amnesty International

Civil society organisations in Mozambique have called for the suspension of operations by a mining company that Amnesty International has cited as violating laws at a mine at Nagonha, in the north of the country.

“We want the suspension of the company’s activities until all irregularities are put right,” Fátima Mimbire, a researcher at the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), which helped AI prepare the study, told Lusa on Wednesday.

At issue is a report presented in Maputo last month that cited alleged violations of national and international laws by Haiyu Mozambique Mining at a heavy sands mine in the Nampula region.

According to the report, with the title ‘”Our lives mean nothing”: the Human Cost of Chinese Mining in Nagonha, Mozambique’, the company’s operations in the area have transformed the local landscape and in 2015 flash flooding destroyed 48 homes, leaving 290 people homeless. The only proposal to compensate the victims was for a payment of 20,000 meticais (€260) for those who lost a home of masonry and 4,000 meticais for the loss of shacks made of other materials.

“There was no environmental impact study, which would result in a resettlement plan,” said Mimbire.

On Tuesday AI and the CIP were heard by parliament’s committee on agriculture, economy and environment, which promised to set up a group to look into the case.

In comments quoted by the newspaper O País, an environmental consultant for the company, Amilcar Marremula, denied that its operations had jeopardised the drainage system and argued that there was no need for a resettlement plan.

Haiyu has mined heavy sands in two concessions in Nampula (at Nagonha and Sangage) since 2011, extracting minerals such as ilmenite, titanium and zircon.

Full AI report here

Source: Lusa