MINMIDT secretary of state undertakes field trip to wage war against illegal miners

By Amindeh Blaise Atabong in Yaounde, with field reports

 

One of Cameroon’s finest mining engineers who doubles as the secretary of state in the ministry of mines, industries and technological development (MINMIDT), Fuh Calistus Gentry has embarked on an all-out war against illegal miners and companies who are not respecting recent decisions taken by the ministry to put sanity in the mining sector in Cameroon.

To match words with action, Fuh Calistus Gentry, a mining engineer trained in the renowned Imperial College in London recently undertook a special and no-nonsense trip to the East region to sensitise and evaluate the implementation of a recent ministerial decision suspending the issuing and renovation of licenses, and other transactions relating to authorisations in the mining sector.

It makes meaning to indicate that Minister Fuh Calistus is one of few of President Biya’s ministers who have been seen on the field of late to answer to burning issues about the country’s growth. During his sensitization trip to the East region, the minister did not limit himself to holding meetings in air-conditioned offices but went right down to the field to live the realities on the ground.

According to the secretary of state, it was very necessary for key stakeholders in the sector to be abreast with the decree of July 4, 2014, modifying and supplementing certain provisions of the March 26, 2002 decree; being the text of application of Law no: 001 of May 16, 2001which is the Cameroon mining code. Reason why the delegation was on the field to respond to on-the-spot worries, especially those of artisanal miners.

The Minister Fuh Calistus-led team comprising of geological experts, amongst them the MINMIDT director of mining, Jean Kisito Mvogo, also had as mission to evaluate the number of excavators authorised per site, to avoid over exploitation of the country’s endowed mineral resources.

During consultations between administrative authorities and mining stakeholders, local inhabitants complained that things have not been going on as initially planned. Janvier Limpopo, a resident of Ngoura, Lom and Djerem division, cited that there was wide confusion between exploration licenses and mining permits. “Companies that were issued exploitation licenses have gone as far as extracting all our minerals”, the local decried.

To corroborate the prevailing mafia in the mining sector, the Senior Divisional Officer for Lom and Djerem, Irénéé Galim Ngong, declared that foreigners from Asia arrive the country with short term visas, but are later on found in the mines long after their visas have expired.

This declaration was immediately confirmed by security officials who revealed that on July 21, 2014, more than 30 illegal immigrants from China were detained in the East region.

Reacting to the aforementioned, the secretary of state warned that government would proceed to withdraw exploration licenses from defaulting companies as well as mete out merciless sanctions on defaulters. He intimated that all necessary measures are already put in place to curb the rising trend of illegality in the mining sector of the country.

“The illegality was instituted by the fact that the law gave the right of the small-scale mining only to Cameroonians. These are people who think that artisanal mining means that you should take a spade and a hoe to a mining site. It is a surface phenomenon. In Brazil, Ghana, Colombia, Peru, South Africa …, different levels of mechanization and sophistication are involved. So, our own artisanal mining could not be able to get a simple washing plan to recover the gold. So, they called on the expertise and financial capabilities of people from outside Cameroon and that is where illegality set is. And these people came and use other Cameroonians to take licenses. There was no basis on which to levy any tax because the only tax they paid was advalorem tax. Even that, they did not declare any real figures. So, it was a tax-free activity. We couldn’t do much because there were no texts that gave us the ability to walk in and create order. These texts have been signed. Permits were given randomly and we have put a stop to it. Permits will henceforth be given to people only when the locations of their sites are identified. When we will resume giving permits for artisanal mining, it will be done in a strict manner and under the supervision of the minister and not the regional delegate as was the case before”, Fuh Calistus Gentry explained.

Going by the inhabitants of Betare Oya, the exploitation of gold dates as far back as 1930 with little or no benefits to the local population. National statistics hold that 200kilograms of gold is exploited monthly in the South, Adamawa and North regions, a CAPAM official said. However, these statistics do not reflect the realities on the ground as more than 95% of gold extracted are lost in clandestine transaction, at times in complicity with some senior officials from the ministry of mines, industries and technological development.

It was therefore against this backdrop that the Western-trained mining engineer and secretary of state in the ministry of mines, Fuh Calistus Gentry went down to the field; not only to see things for himself but most importantly to wage a relentless war against illegal mining in the East region in particular and Cameroon in general.