Johannesburg — THE Department of Mineral Resources met yesterday's deadline to publish thousands of prospecting and mining right applications on its website as Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu dismissed suggestions of irregularities in the granting of prospecting rights.

Making public 26191 prospecting and mining applications is the first visible step in a series of measures Ms Shabangu outlined last month to head off perceptions of maladministration in her department. These views were fuelled by the awarding of two prospecting rights to small companies for parts of existing mines owned by big mining companies.

Ms Shabangu has imposed a six-month moratorium on accepting new applications for prospecting rights as the department audits its data base of rights granted since May 2004, when the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act was promulgated.

She has promised to bring urgent amendments to the act to address areas of ambiguity.

The department published 39 498 pages showing who submitted applications and their status.

State-owned mining company the African Exploration, Mining and Finance Corporation is shown to have submitted a large number of prospecting applications.

While the documents are welcomed, there are shortfalls, such as not indicating the mineral applied for and application and acceptance dates, said law firm Bell Dewar.

"If the minister is serious about shining a spotlight on any possible unusual activities in the application process, the next step would obviously be to make all of the information at the Mineral and Petroleum Titles Registration Office available," Bell Dewar said.

The department will, in the "next month or so", release its review of the Mining Charter, which governs the obligations mining companies must satisfy to get new-order mining and prospecting rights, Ms Shabangu said at the Africa Down Under Conference in Perth yesterday. Peter Leon of law firm Webber Wentzel said a lot of information in the review was already in the public domain after industry, the government and labour signed a mining sector strategy document in June.

Ms Shabangu said "unfounded allegations" had been made regarding the awarding of prospecting rights to Imperial Crown Trading over a portion of the Sishen Iron Ore mine and Keysha Investments 220 for base metal rights over part of Lonmin 's Marikana platinum mine.

"I have carefully examined these allegations and found no evidence of maladministration or irregularity in the manner in which these two prospecting rights were granted," she said.

This flies in the face of court documents filed by Kumba, which owns the majority of the Sishen mine.

Kumba alleges irregularities in Imperial's application, saying Imperial had used parts of Kumba's mining rights application to draw up its own application.