UPND DOUBLE STANDARDS IN SMALL SCALE MINING IS PATHETIC, HORRIBLE
By Peter Sinkamba
When it benefits its party members, UPND calls illegal mining as small scale mining. When its members are not the ones benefiting, UPND calls small scale mining as illegal mining. So disgusting hypocrisy.
As a matter of policy to promote youth employment and economic empowerment, PF government transformed and legitimised the Jerabo mining activities on the Copperbelt and elsewhere into small scale mining cluster. Youths involved were merely requested to form cooperatives by policy direction, and allowed to carry out mining activities, without necessarily going through the rigorous process of acquiring small scale mining licences as prescribed by the Mines Act of 2015 and its subsidiary legislation.
Through this process, government facilitated youths to carry out small scale mining activities at places like black mountain in Kitwe, Luanshya, and Mufulira, the open pits in Chingola, and gold panning elsewhere.
When UPND formed government in 2021, it facilitated its members to takeover small scale operations at the black mountains and open pits formerly operated by dominant PF youths. None of UPND youths operating those sites acquired small scale mining licences as is prescribed by the Mines Act 2015 but government never labelled them as illegal miners.
Even where there were accidents which claimed several lives, for example, in Chingola last year, UPND government never bothered to go and stop the operations with brutal force sanitize simply because its party members were benefiting.
Yet elsewhere, for example Mpika and Kasempa Dengwe Area, police was unleashed with brutal force to stop the small scale mining operations largely benefiting women and youths, allegedly because the operations are illegal.
Like in Mpika, women and youths in Dengwe Area lost property running in hundreds of thousands of Kwacha. In both cases, several were injured.
The most frustrating conduct by UPND government is its appetite to serve foreigners instead of prioritizing Zambians. As we saw in Mpika and Mufulira, mineral claims which were benefiting our Zambian women and youths were ultimately handed over to foreigners by UPND government. It will be unsurprising when a foreigner pitches up at Dengwe claiming the mineral rights over the area.
So horrible policy!