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Nigeria: Indian, Chinese Technology for Artisan Miners -- Minister
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This Day (Lagos)
7 May 2008
Posted to the web 7 May 2008
Patrick Ugeh
Abuja
Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Alhaji Sarafa Isola, yesterday disclosed that plans were in the pipeline to introduce Chinese and Indian technologies to artisanal and small scale miners in the country in order to bring them to required standards as part of measures to make mining one of the leading contributors to the economy.
Noting that the mining sector in Nigeria was still largely at the artisanal and small scale-scale level, he, however, regretted that many were not prepared to accept new techniques, as a result of which he said he would start a sensitisation to enlighten them soon.
Isola said efforts were already on to formalise this sector, adding that about 400 cooperatives had been formed with a view to organising the sector to be able to achieve its objective.
He said this was imperative because "if we don't formalise this sector, it's going to become a threat to the development of the real mining we're talking about."
Isola spoke in Abuja when the World Bank representative and task team leader in the development of the mining sector, Craig Andrews, visited him during the mid-term review of the project, which started in 2005 and due for completion in 2009.
Both Isola and the Brettonwoods representative agreed that there may be need to extend this time frame by two years as there are some hitches at a point in the execution of the project.
"We want to assure you that this project will achieve the objectives, particularly as it relates to the areas we still need to cover," the minister stated.
"Also suffice it to say that during this midterm review, we're going to reorder our priorities to fit into the focus of this administration," he said.
On the seven minerals adopted for development by the ministry, "which is one of the issues on the front burner," he said, "every country is trying to concentrate on the minerals where they have comparative advantage, especially world class minerals and, even in the context of past efforts, we are focused on seven strategic minerals."
He assured that the mining cadastral system was very much in place and that the mining cadastral bill was ready for the consideration of management of this ministry.
In the next couple of weeks, he revealed, it should get to the Ministry of Justice and finally to the Federal Executive Council, adding that other issues relating to capacity buiding were already being addressed.
For instance, he said, as at yesterday, they were working out the mines environmental compliance regulations as well as health and safety regulations, which are vital for the successful operation of the mines.
Earlier, Andrews explained that the review was intended to revise the work. "where we were when the project was prepared, how far we've come to achieve the objective of the project and whatever adjustments are required now for us to achieve those objectives and where we want to go."
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According to him, "We have read the reports of the last seven months, our consultant worked with the project management to do a study of the various performance indicators with respect to the developement objectives. Our views will be presented in detail at a workshop tomorrow and they would be discussed further with the project".
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