Dar-Es-Salaam — The discovery of gold minerals in Tanzania in the early 1990s was sweet music to the liberalisation-minded administration of President Benjamin Mkapa's government

Three years down the line after the international mining conglomerates had started churning out tonnes of precious metals that include not only gold as initially envisaged, but also copper, diamonds and others, questions that ought to have been settled before are now emerging, leading to conflicts.

Counter charges between the government on the one hand and the communities living near the mines and who have come to regard the mines as their own are now becoming the order of the day.

Mining is seen and portrayed by the government as possible solution to the chronic unemployment, increased income per capita currently standing at USD200 and the GDP.

The communities say the drive to make Tanzania an investor-friendly country should not compromise the need to have investments that would leave them richer in terms of wealth and jobs generated, and not richer with "empty pits when the international miners leave".

Things started getting out of hand when the Canadian firm at the Kahama Gold Mining in Bulyanhulu, said to be third largest, discovered some other traces like copper concentrates within its goldmines. They have to export the traces for processing.

According to Titus Kabantega, a resident near the Kahama Gold mines who sees the exports as pure theft of his country's resources, asked how such an international mining giant would not have foreseen such traces and set up the necessary machinery for processing them locally.

"These people are simply stealing Tanzania's gold wealth with the help of laws tilted to favour them", he said.

Roy Maede, the Kahama gold mining manager, however, maintains that the gold mine ores only has 40 percent gold, with the rest being copper concentrates.

The rising concern is now threatening to get out of hand as discontent is not being confined at the mining sites alone, but is spreading to the wider members of public countrywide, who fear that Tanzania will not benefit much from gold mining being carried out by the multinationals in Geita, Kahama and Nzega.

In a community survey in the Lake Victoria gold mining zones and in Dar es Salaam by a private business consultancy firm, many people voiced their pessimism, while others said the 3 percent royalty paid by gold mining firms to the government was peanuts.

Analysts believe that although the presence of foreign investors in the mining field is a very good thing for the country, "the meager three per cent royalty paid to the government is unrealistic"

"It would be better if the government share stood at between 10 to 15 percent. What they are paying now is peanuts.

"There is a certain way that some of the authorities are benefiting as sleeping partners, otherwise the reasons for this arrangement can't be grasped," voiced the Shinyanga Urban Member of Parliament Leonard Derefa.

The total projected tax and royalty to be paid by the three gold multinationals in Kahama, Geita and Nzega during their estimated life span is USD 408.4 million, which according to economic analysts can only finance the construction of 1,633 Km of tarmac roads, at the current cost of USD250, 000 per Km.