The members of the community present at the research meeting shared and highlighted numerous complaints about the mushrooming mining activities in the area with serious environmental disturbance. The latter activity is carried out through the whole communal land leaving little room for livestock grazing and conservation activities. Below are the current disturbances which need serious attention.
– Physical exploration activities (Leaving heavy landmarks behind)
– Spoil of nature by cutting huge and attractive mountains
– polluting of water and closure of river beds to make roads to their operations
– Displacement of local community and wildlife disturbance
The above aspects can be addressed before a decision is made about the mining and the entire issue is handled during the EIA consultative process with the affected community. The participants shared their disappointment with the process undertaken by consultants who are hired by the prospective miners. The latter means that the consultant, though independent, has to make sure that their report is in favor of the project implementation. Secondly the affected community contribution is limited due to the knowledge of the subject matter and the way the whole process is not inclusive. Like the advert places in newspapers exclude people in the rural area, Community consultation only takes place at one village and others don’t attend because of limited resources.
Lastly the governments don’t visit sites to ensure that the community was a proper consultant and rely on consent letters from the Traditional chiefs (Bribes) while Community also don’t have excess to the EIA reports and rehabilitation plans. All those combined issues have led to community uprising and a bad image has been given the overall mining industry. Environmental genocide take place around these remote villages need to expose and shared with the regional and international lobby groups to assist with the required laws reforms.
Community demands
– The community demands their right to prior and informed consent to mining operations on their communal land. It demands the rehabilitation of the damaged area by the mining companies. This rehabilitation must benefit the community in the form of jobs, bricks, crushed stones and tarred roads. The community further wants:
– Access to information. They want to see the environmental assessment reports, environmental management plans, environmental clearance certificates, mining and prospecting licenses and transport permits. Thus far, the MEFT has refused to provide some of these reports because some officials claimed that they are not public documents.
– Direct community representation in all discussions relating to mining plans, social responsibility projects. rehabilitation etc. Communities must be alerted to all aspects and repercussions of mining operations instead of limiting consultations to the traditional authority. Community views and demands as expressed by elected and accountable representatives must be central to any licenses being issued.
– Access to financial information, specifically, the financial and banking accounts of the traditional authority, to ensure that inducements have not been exchanged for mining consent.
– Information about who owns the hundreds of granite slabs that were left behind which were mined after the expiry of the ECC.
– Access to the waste and machinery left behind by the companies, strewn across the landscape.
– Justice and accountability. Those who either through gross incompetence, dereliction of duties or collusion allowed violations of the law and crimes against the environment to take place with impunity, should be brought to book.
– An end to mining and that those negatively affected by past mining be resettled.
– The law to be amended and made explicit about communities’ rights to consultation, participation, decision-making and to benefits.
– Full disclosure of the impact of mining and the right to say no to mining if it harms their collective interests and the environment.
– Where mining is permitted, the community wants legally binding agreements on the benefits to communities with regard to jobs, skills development, training, income streams and infrastructure development.
