The Ministry of Natural Resources has dismissed claims that it has been withholding land from small scale miners, countering that it has in fact been working to provide equal land access to miners within this grouping.
“The Ministry of Natural Resources takes note of reports in circulation to the effect that there is the dispossessing and withholding of mining lands for small miners in favour of Syndicates.
The Ministry strives to ensure equal access to mining lands, and in fact, has instituted a deliberate policy of righting the imbalance where small miners did not have sufficient access to lands,” the ministry noted in a release.
It said that it has demonstrated this mandate only recently, when it spearheaded an activity last Friday, during which lands were distributed via lottery. It was stated that the exercise will continue across the individual mining districts over a three month period, to ensure that pre-qualified citizens are guaranteed a minimum of one mining block each.
The ministry added that it is its belief and policy that the nation’s patrimony belongs to all citizens and should be accessed equally by all, and therefore urged that “any defamatory allegations imputing otherwise should be ignored”.
