This is a national hazard,they are destroying Kafue River
By Ngobola Cengelo Muyembe
One of the water bodies that were being polluted by Vedanta of KCM is very close to the Katangian/Kalahari Basin of Northwestern Province where the Congo and the Kafue rivers start from.
Lusaka gets its water from underground and Lusaka Water has laid pipelines to get alternative water from the Kafue River south of Lusaka. That Kafue starts as a small stream in Northwestern Province from the Katangian Basin and matures on the Copperbelt through the tributaries.
If you destroy these tributaries, you will not have water and electricity in Lusaka and elsewhere since your alternative is the same Kafue.
This was what I and other people were urging the PF to use against Vedanta not only to grab KCM away from them but to slap them with penalties that would have seen them bankrupt.
I thought the government had just put a halt to the issuance of mining licenses.
We now have a proposal to expand an open-pit in Chingola near water bodies close to the KCM tailing dam which spilt effluent that polluted our rivers that led to KCM gaining notoriety. This just goes to show how complacent our regulators are towards the environment and the reason I urged serious reforms before we can start mines in game parks.
By complacent, I mean to say ”why even entertain this proposal in the first place?”
I started this work back in 2010 because my engineering works are mainly in water infrastructure, and it is very important that water sources where we draw from are kept clean.
In some countries, they do not even allow cows near water bodies but in this country, we have all sorts of people writing reports justifying the unthinkable. I travelled to most of these areas using my own money and Prince Daniel Jere of Kalulushi the brother to Paramount Chief Mpezeni is one of my witnesses as he donated money towards the investigations.
Now we have someone even advertising to expand an open pit which should have never been in the first place. The people of Kalulushi have no water because of this pollution rendering millions of dollars of investment worthless since the abstraction point is on a polluted stream.
Most importantly, it is not just the people of Kalulushi that have lost out of this but the rural people whose livelihood depends on clean water from these streams.
What you are calling China Copper Mine today was just a chicken run operated by peasant farmers when I and Mr Jere visited the area in 2013 after KCM polluted the Mwambashi Stream and it should have been maintained as a farm just like Amano School nearby.
Today I was shocked to see on Page No 10 of Times of Zambia dated 7th March 2022 an advert for China Copper Mine trying to expand in an area in the middle of water bodies of the same basin.
When the government announced that they were no longer issuing mining licenses, the Chinese Copper Mine is already trying to start expanding in the area where the KCM tailing dams polluted the Mwambashi, Mushishima and Muntimpa streams are located.
If ZEMA can be sleeping over the construction of structures on water bodies giving life to the Kafue that I highlighted in the past days, do you really think they can be trusted to handle a hazard such as a Chinese Mine close to the Katangian Basin?
The KCM tailing dam is still a hazard to surrounding land and rivers so why then allow a large expansion of another mine in the same area before you correct the situation]
