Follow due process in your mining activities, MAN appeals to miners
NAN-HE-30
Miners
Abuja, Oct. 20, 2016 (NAN) Alhaji Sani Shehu, the President of Miners Association of Nigeria (MAN), has advised miners to follow due process in all their mining activities.
Shehu who spoke on Thursday in Abuja at a forum of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), stressed the need to follow due process as “mining is regulated sector with dos and don’ts.
“Mining is not like trading, if you like to trade on anything, just have your capital and source your product; if it is groundnut or whatever, go to the market, sell it and make profit.
“Mining is a regulated sector, which requires a miner to get a mining licence, community development agreement, environmental impact assessment or environmental audit.
“So it is fully regulated sector, that has a lot of requirements for one to meet and we are sensitising our people to do it according to the regulation.
“There are components such as safety, health, environment, that are attached to mining which a miner is supposed to observe.
“Part of what we are doing to assist the government is information dissemination,” he said
Shehu said there were a lot of mining rules not being observed by miners and urged the regulatory authority to step up its functions.
He said that after mining a site, there was need for the company that carried out the operations to work on `healing the land’ but it was seldomly done.
Shehu said that it was the responsibility of the regulatory authority, a department in the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development to ensure that mining and reclamation were done properly.
“But I noticed that the department has been incapacitated in a way, they find it difficult to function properly, to the extent of proper monitoring and ensuring that reclamation is made after mining,” he said.
The president, however, expressed optimism that with the government’s recent commitment to the mining sector, a renewed attention would be given and things would change positively. (NAN)
ATAB/ACO/OU
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Edited by Oluleye Abiodun/Obike Ukoh
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