Stakeholder consultations to commence once mines bill is referred to Mines Committee
Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Mining Development has assured the public that public consultation of the Mines and Minerals bill will be carried out once the bill is referred to the committee.
Rudairo Mapuranga
Speaking to Mining Zimbabwe yesterday the Committee Chairperson Hon Edmond Mkaratigwa said the bill will follow due process before being taken to the President for approval.
“The way forward is its conveyance to the Parliament of Zimbabwe so that it goes through the law-making process.
“That process includes the reference of the Bill to the Portfolio Committee on Mines and Mining Development and engagement with the citizens on behalf of Parliament. So basically, the Bill will go back to the citizens and different sectoral stakeholders for their consideration and input in a participatory manner. After that, Parliament as a whole will also endorse or reject it but we know it should sail through because we will do our work with all alertness. After that, the Bill will be ready for the Presidential ascent and enrollment of the Act as part of the laws of Zimbabwe.
“We have done a lot already with regard to the Bill and we hope that people already know what they want to be part of that law. May I also advise that the Bill will still be shared with the citizens on time and all will be given room to participate in the process therefore no one will be left behind as we are prepared to go to the last mile,” Mkaratigwa said.
The Mkaratigwa-led Portfolio Committee on Mines and Mining Development might after a series of failures from past committees be the one to claim the success and positive outcome of the Mines and Minerals Amendment bill.
The Bill was returned without approval by President Mnangagwa in 2018 after a lot of stakeholders expressed their concerns about the basic thrust of legal changes, and the consensus was that it needed to be redrafted to reflect the far more open and investor-friendly environment of the Second Republic.
The redrafting of the bill did not prove to be heading in the right direction up until 2020 when Mkaratigwa took over the chairmanship of the Mines and Mining Development Parliamentary Portfolio Committee.
Speaking to Mining Zimbabwe in June 2022 Mkaratigwa said his committee took different initiatives to make sure that they were involved in the drafting of the bill to avoid a situation where stakeholders’ concerns would not be taken into the drafting of the bill.
“From day one we sought to accelerate the drafting of the Mines and Minerals Amendment Bill, but bearing in mind of course that the stage that we were at is what we refer to as the prebill stage and at that stage formally they is nothing that is expected from the parliament. The parliament process will kick in from the day that the Minister table the bill in Parliament and according to the constitution we are then supposed to conduct Public hearings thereafter as a Portfolio Committee we are supposed to deliberate on public views and come up with our recommendations that the Minister will then have to factor in.
“In line with that, we had oral evidence sessions in Parliament whereby we called the Ministry and the institutions under the perfume of the ministry and other stakeholders to try and understand where they were with the bill. This is at which stage, we realized that nothing was moving. We then decided to go the paradigmatic route by way of a workshop which incorporated various stakeholders including the Ministry and that allowed a process that will make us relevant and not Altovise with the law in terms of following resolutions that will come out of a workshop that would cause us as a Portfolio Committee to get involved in the grafting of the bill.
“To that end as a Committee, we constituted a committee that was headed by Hon Davison Svuure to work closely with the grafting team from the Ministry of Mines as well as the Deputy Attorney General’s Office. At some stage, it became apparent that we needed to take these officers out of their busy office schedules in Harare and we booked them in a hotel outside Harare, we managed to achieve this compliment of friends of the committee like ZELA who managed to meet some of the financial costs involved.
“This enabled the completion of the grafting and thereafter it began the prerogative of the Deputy Attorney General’s office to start decoding and crafting the graft bill into legal language so to speak. This process has taken a long time and we have been following up in between, we had other workshops just to buttress the same resolutions and come up with new resolutions because most of the resolutions were time-based and we realized in some instances that the time-lapse led to expiration and the effectiveness of the resolutions. And I must say that where we are today the bill stands complete and the Deputy Attorney General’s office has reverted to the Ministry of Mines to say now they can maybe finalize attendance to the bill and be able to take it before the Cabinet Committee on legislation which they had done before but they were issues raised by the Cabinet Committee and which led to referring back the bill the Ministry.” Mkaratigwa said.
When the President referred back to the bill, the Chamber of Mines and other parties were reportedly unhappy with some sections of the Bill, including the definition of strategic minerals, which was thought to be “too broad” that it covered nearly all minerals.
There were concerns too, over provisions that seek to transfer administrative aspects of the pegging of claims from the principal Act to subsidiary legislation. Many stakeholders want the 1961 Mines and Minerals Act to be amended, arguing that it was no longer in sync with what is obtaining in the country today.
The 61-year-old law criminalises possession of gold, therefore making the work of small scale miners illegal. Now, the Bill seeks to formalise the work of artisanal and small-scale gold miners, who have become critical in terms of gold mining and deliveries to Fidelity Printers and Refiners. Other progressive provisions in the Bill cover the protection of the environment, sustainable development and the establishment of the Safety, Health and Rehabilitation Fund.