DAILY NEWS Reporter, 27th November 2009 @ 14:55, Total Comments: 0, Hits: 522
TANZANIA has already resolved the 1996 dispute involving the alleged killings of miners at the Canada-owned Bulyanhulu Gold Corporation. The matter was concluded when instruments detailed to investigate the deaths found no evidence in the claims at the time.
The Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office responsible for Disaster Management, Mr Philip Marmo, said this when interviewed by 'Daily News on Saturday' on the action the government has taken to find answers to allegations that there had been human rights abuses when reallocating people from the area.
"We used both local and international instruments to investigate the claims and the inquiries were eventually brought to rest by the findings," he said.
He also said that the issue had reached courts of law whose verdict had given a clean bill of health to the process.
But he also attributed the allegations' wide coverage in media to the fact that 1996 was an election year that prompted some opposition politicians to capitalize on the matter for political ends.
Asked on how the government was reforming the mining industry, the Ministry of Energy and Minerals Principal Geologist and spokesperson, Mr Aloyce Tesha, said that a process that would lead to a new legislation had already started after a new mining policy was introduced last July.
He said that the ongoing process was part of the requirements of the procedure for Tanzania to join the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), which started this year.
By joining EITI, Tanzania will be equipped with the essential tool to engage government, parliament and the public in constructive industry policies.
The EITI-Multi-Stakeholders Working Group comprises 15 members from the government civil society and industry companies that will implement all EITI principles.
The arrangement is that civil societies and stakeholders follow up what the extractors gives to the government in terms of loyalties and taxes and the government has to be transparent on what it has earned and how it is using it for the benefit of all citizens.
"When you join the IEIE, you have to make reforms regularly in the industry," he observed. The government made reforms in the mining policy in July this year and the process towards a new mining legislation is underway.
With regard to the alleged killings of artisanal miners in 1996 at the Bulyanhulu Gold Corporation, he said that a task force comprising police officers, local commissioners and international civil society officials had been formed at the time and came up with the conclusion that there had been no killings.
Neither had there been any human rights abuses. Police, he said, had investigated criminal allegations but had not come up with any evidence.
According to the current arrangement, when a mining company wants to work at a particular area where there are settlements, the government uses the World Bank resettlement policy which stipulates that people have to be taken to another favourable place on agreement.
President Jakaya Kikwete and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper were expected today to discuss a way forward in developing the mining industry when they arrived for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Summit in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
Canada is home to Barrick, one of the biggest mining multinationals in the world with mining interests in Tanzania.
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