Mining & Trade News

By Wahard Betha

Stakeholders in Malawi’s minerals sector have expressed concern over environmental degradation in small scale gold mining hotspots across the country where Artisanal and Small-Scale Miners (ASMs) abandon the mines without any rehabilitation after exhausting the mineral reserves.   

Coordinator for Chamber of Mines and Energy Grain Malunga said in an interview that the miners are the ones to be blame as they leave the land out of frustration and ignorance on the need for rehabilitation. 

Malunga said: “The miners are to blame. That is the price government pays when it fails to regulate the sector.”

“ASM gold mining is not as well paying as people think. Some leave the sites frustrated because they earn less and find no need to rehabilitate the sites.”

However, Coordinator for Natural Resources Justice Network (NRJN) Kennedy Rashid in a separate interview blamed poor coordination between duty bearers including the District Councils, Ministry of Mining and Malawi Environmental Protection Authority (MEPA).

Rashid said the public expected the involvement of MEPA in monitoring such issues.

He said: “MEPA has not been effective when it comes to monitoring the mining cycle. The expectations have been that since MEPA is involved in the licensing and regulation by government, it would also empower district level environmental officers to inspect ASM activities.”

“But currently the government agencies at local government level where the mining activities are happening seem to not be well coordinated with the central government,” he said.

In his response to our questionnaire, Director General for Mines and Minerals Regulatory Authority Samuel Sakhuta said the Ministry is trying its best to ensure that the problem does not get uncontrollable as it is currently working in collaboration with MEPA and the miners to ensure that they move together in monitoring and supervision in major hotspots.

He said: “For instance, at Manondo where we issued a licence to a cooperative which was assisted by Judah Group, we noted that the environment was not in good shape as we found a big trench left by miners who had run away.”

“Because Judah expressed interest in taking over the mine, they hired an excavator and filled these trenches.”

“If we have financial resources, we want to fill all trenches starting from the gold mining hotspots.”

“Of course, we can blame the miners but we, as government, have to bear responsibility and enforce monitoring, supervision and sensitization so that this should not escalate again.”

Sakhuta also said Government instituted a ban on any illegal mining activity to ensure that miners operate with the environmental conservation knowledge in mind.

He said: “We did that because we want them to be acquiring licenses which will also include some measures on how they can conserve the environment.”

“Through the licensing, we will also be able to trace them when we are conducting monitoring or supervision activities,” he said.

ASMs are major suppliers of gold to Export Development Fund (EDF), a subsidiary of Reserve Bank of Malawi, which was entrusted to be buying gold on behalf of Malawi Government.

ASMs continue to discover a number of small scale gold mining sites across the country, and the major ones are located in Machinga, Kasungu, Balaka, Chiradzulu, Nkhotakota and Nkhatabay.

Despite the presence of alluvial gold across Malawi, the Ministry of Mining is yet to discover source rocks as it has been failing to conduct geological exploration to discover the reef gold deposits due to budgetary constraints.

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