MINES and Minerals Development Minister Paul Kabuswe says one of the important milestones of the new dawn government is putting up a mine appeals tribunal.
Speaking during a stakeholder consultative meeting on the development of the new mineral resources development policy, Tuesday, Kabuswe said for a long time, people had been afraid to appoint a tribunal.
“I thought that we will receive a lot of applause from the mining community because I think for a long-time people have been afraid to appoint the tribunal, but I think the declaration of intent as far as the new dawn is concerned is to make sure that every impediment to the development of the mining sector is dealt with. One of the very important milestones is to have a mine appeals tribunal which is now in place, and you can see that we want to be as transparent as we can and to make sure that we answer to the law in terms of what should be done in the sector,” he said.
And Kabuswe said government was trying to be consultative and all-inclusive when formulating the mineral resources development policy.
“We have tried to be as consultative as we can so that we listen to what the country is saying in relation to the mining sector. As a new dawn government, we want to be all-inclusive, we don’t want to leave anybody behind because we appreciate the fact that Zambia has been mining since the 1900s, and as such we have a wealth of knowledge which we must tap in. I want to appeal to those who may not have made it today, that the final document hasn’t been done yet, so you are free to make presentations even directly to the ministry so that we can come up with a document that answers to the challenges, also that answers to how we want the mining sector to be driven in this country,” he stated.
“We want to actualise the potential of Zambia, this is the time, we have talked enough. We have debated and argued enough, so this is the time to actualise the potential of this country and this is what the new dawn government is bringing to the table. This is the vision of His Excellency the President of the Republic of Zambia Mr. Hakainde Hichilema, he says ‘minister enough of talking potential, this is the time to actualise, this is the time for Zambians to rise to the occasion and actualise the potential of this county’. We have a lot of mining brains, we have a lot of economic brains, let’s sit round the table like we are doing right now, bring out all the ideas so that this policy can capture them and then we move this country forward and actualise its full potential. We cannot have a county that is so rich yet it looks very poor, we need to balance that up.”
Kabuswe said the ministry had so far carried out consultations in nine provinces.
“In the past few weeks, our ministry has carried out consultations on 9 provinces this is how serious we are. We have had meetings in Mansa, we have had meetings in Mpika, Kasama, we have had meetings in Kitwe, Kabwe, Solwezi, Choma, we have had meetings in Mongu and Chipata. We wanted to interface with the public including various stakeholders in the mining sector with a view to receive submissions on the draft mineral resources development policy,” said Kabuswe.
“We do not intend to come out with theoretical documents, we want a document that will make us be practical. And I want to tell you that this government is very serious in terms of implementing issues, we are not just a talking government, we want to walk the talk, we want to make sure that we are practical in our approach to issues that we document. When you go to various ministries and offices, you find cabinets full of documents, this was done, this was a concept paper, this is a what document, yet no practicality to those documents, the new dawn government is coming with a new approach.”
