Tanzania mine row anger: CEN 5.23.08 p 8. May 26, 2008
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Tanzania, Church of England Newspaper, Environment.trackback
Read it all in The Church of England Newspaper.
The Anglican Church in Tanzania has urged its government to take greater care in the licensing of foreign companies to develop the nation’s natural resources.
Abandoned open pit mines have rendered the land useless for agriculture, the Bishop of Mara said last week, while a church sponsored report argues that foreign multi-nationals have taken millions of ounces of gold out of the land, but paid little to the government.
During a tour of an abandoned gold mine in Buhmeba, close to Lake Victoria and the Kenyan border, Bishop Hilkiah Omindo Deya told reporters multi-national corporations had “harvested a lot of gold at the mine but left Buhemba villagers with huge holes.”
While providing wealth for government coffers, the mines in Tanzania’s rural provinces despoiled the land, ruined the few roads, and provided few social benefits for the surrounding areas. When the gold seams played out, the companies and miners moved on, he said, leaving the land wasted and the water polluted for the local villagers.
A report underwritten by Christian Aid and Norwegian Church Aid for the Tanzanian Council of Churches has also charged the government with mismanaging its mining contracts with foreign multi-nationals. “Tanzania is one of the ten poorest countries in the world. At the same time, Tanzania possesses around 45 million ounces of gold, which at the current gold price means this country is sitting on a fortune of up to $39bn,” said the report entitled, “A Golden Opportunity – How Tanzania is Failing to Benefit from Gold Mining.”
However, the gold is being “extracted at a rate of over 1.6m ounces a year, meaning that they may last 28 years,” requiring the government to enact major policy changes in the royalties, and in developing plans for restoring the land once the ore has played out.
Projections of quick riches from foreign operated mines do not survive public scrutiny. The report cited the case of the Buzwagi mine deal made with Canada’s Barrick Gold Corporation. Claims by former Energy and Minerals Minister to Parliament the Buzwagi contract would pay $20 million a year in taxes, was shown to be overstated, as the true rate of return for the government was only $590,000 a year in revenue.
The government’s claim appears to “have been put forward to hoodwink parliament and silence calls for parliamentary scrutiny of the contract,” the report said.
In his Christmas Eve sermon last year, the new Archbishop of Tanzania, the Most Rev. Valentino Mokiwa challenged the government to revoke mining deals such as the Buzwagi contract given to multi-national corporations, saying they were let on dubious terms and cheated the common man.
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