President lays down 15-day deadline for plan to end mining pollution in Manica

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President lays down 15-day deadline for plan to end mining pollution in Manica

12:18 CAT | 07 Aug 2017

O País

President Filipe Nyusi has set a 15-day deadline for local government and mining operators in Manica to submit proposals for ending pollution from unregulated exploitation of mineral resources including gold, bauxite, tourmaline and red garnets in Manica.

Speaking in Manica district after a meeting in the village of Maridza on Thursday afternoon, the president became irritated when Provincial Director of Mineral Resources and Energy, João de Lima asked him to comment on the problem of the alleged “fiscal deficit” caused by miners, and told him to sit down.

“You are not doing your job,” Nyusi said, urging the use of “appropriate universal [mining] technologies”. He cited Zimbabwe and Botswana, where water resources are not polluted by mining, as examples.

“It should not be necessary for the President of the Republic to come here to find a solution to the problem. We cannot discuss fees when we do not audit. Manica should not continue to be a land of open holes made by mining and never rehabilitated,” compromising other activities such as agriculture, the president said.

Before the meeting, in which artisanal and large operators accused each other polluting rivers waters and posing a serious threat to human health, agricultural activity and aquatic biodiversity, WHO OR WHAT HAD come to the conclusion that “the solution rests in the government taking a tough stance with the prevaricators”.

President Nyusi also visited Agriza Messinza, a 104-hectare, $760,000 project growing bananas and lychees which employs 78 workers (ten of them women), where he was told of declining yields resulting from water pollution, and then visited the mining company Clean Tech Mining.

Speaking at a press conference, the president of the Manica Miners’ Association, Sairosse Marondo, said that “we acknowledge that the mining industry is not contributing to the province’s economy in proportion to its potential”, and has weak “consistent and visible” activity.

After visiting an agricultural fair in the morning, President Nyusi inaugurated a new court complex in Guro and led a popular rally in the administrative post of Machipanda, where he reaffirmed that “I will continue to talk with my brother Dhlakama for an effective peace, an essential condition for victory in the struggle against poverty”.

On the last day of his visit, the president visited the Inchope administrative post in Gondola district, where he presided over a rally.

By Madeira Sebastião

Source: Diário de Moçambique