The Emeralds and Semi-Precious Stones Mining Association of Zambian-ESMAZ has advised government to empower local people with the necessary knowledge on mining as opposed to grabbing mines from them on grounds that they have failed to develop.
ESMAZ President Victor Kalesha said the narrative of grabbing mining licenses from local people on the pretext that they are failing to develop and giving them to foreign companies needs correction as it is negatively affecting local people.
Speaking in an interview with the Zambian Business Times-ZBT, Kalesha said formalizing the mining operations of local people is the only way Zambia will realise maximum benefits from its minerals unlike chasing away local people, calling them illegal miners while multinational companies that are stealing and not being honest with taxes mine freely.
Kalesha explained that most of the minerals such as manganese and emeralds that are illegally found and sold on the market are mined by Zambians who are called illegal miners hence the need to formalize their operations and give them licenses so that they can mine legally and start selling to those that want to export.
He however noted that there is need to put in place monitoring mechanisms for the few Zambians that have mining licenses in order to know how much is being mined, exported and how much the nation is realising out of it in terms of taxes.
“There is need for extensive exploration and declaration of how much reserves the country has for manganese and other minerals and how much is produced so that we are able to know the extent in which the manganese can contribute to the national economy”, he said.
The Association President said all mineral resources have the potential to drive the country’s economic fortunes and manganese and emeralds are no exception noting that manganese is on demand and Central and Luapula provinces have good grades with most of it illegally mined in Luapula province.
“We need to take advantage of each mineral as they bring contribution to the economy of the country as they all have the potential in their own way. By doing so, Zambia will have resources coming from all spheres of the mining sector which will benefit the nation by receiving more resources in the national coffers”, he said.
Kalesha mentioned that Zambia will never have a better time than now to correct the mistakes that have been happening in the mining sector adding that there should be a policy that directs that whatever foreign company wants to invest should partner with Zambians to a certain extent.
