Reason for halting mining activities in lower Zambezi national park flimsy, insincere —Tembo

Patriots for Economic Progress (PeP) president, Sean Tembo, has described the reasons given by government to suspend all mining activities by Mwembeshi Resources Limited in the Lower Zambezi National Park as flimsy.

Government had suspended all mining operations in the Lower Zambezi, on the basis that Environmental Restoration Plan was not submitted by Mwembeshi Resources Limited to the Zambia Environmental Management Agency (ZEMA).

Tembo who has been supporting the mining activity in the Lower Zambezi National Park in a statement issued in Lusaka on Saturday said the reason given was flimsy because an Environmental Restoration Plan (ERP) is part of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) which was long done and approved by ZEMA.

He said an EIA basically looks at all the environmental and archaeological issues that will arise from a proposed project and how the project sponsors intend to address those issues.

“In the Lower Zambezi mining case, ZEMA approved the EIA and gave the project sponsors a go ahead to commence mining activities, which they did,” Tembo said.

He said it was not right for government to now turnaround and halt mining activities on the pretext that a certain document was not submitted and if indeed a certain document was not submitted, it can be prepared and submitted while the mining activities continue.

Tembo said halting all mining activities is an unnecessarily drastic decision on the part of government and may financially ruin not only the company undertaking this mining project but also has huge potential to ruin Zambia’s reputation as a mining destination in the eyes of international investors.

“The drastic decision of halting mining activities simply because of an alleged document which ZEMA overlooked before approving the project, has now actualized the risk of an uncertain regulatory environment,” he said.

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