14 mining companies penalised over environmental law violations

The Mines Environmental Compliance Department, of the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development, has said that 14 mining companies have been penalised by the Federal Government for violating various environmental laws.Mr Salim Adegbayega, the Acting Director, said on yesterday in Abuja that the companies were sanctioned in Ogun, FCT, Nasarawa, Lagos, Kogi, Ondo and Edo.Adegbayega said the ministry enforced the sanctions by giving stop work order to some of them; others were refused renewal of their licenses as well as refusal to transfer mineral titles.He said sections 116 and 119 of the law stipulated that before any company commenced mining, it had to submit statutory environmental documents mandatory for the operation.He disclosed that the documents were Environmental Impact Assessment, Environmental Processing and Rehabilitation Programme as well as the Community Development Agreement.The acting director said it was mandatory for any mining company in Nigeria to submit these documents to the ministry before it commenced mining but all the companies sanctioned had failed to do so.Adegboyega said the companies involved both local and foreign ones and were mostly into mining of granites and other minerals while more would soon be sanctions.He said the ministry had developed new strategies to monitor the approval of the renewal of licenses.``If an operator is known to have defaulted in environmental obligations, the ministry will refuse to renew the license; we have more than 10 cases recently which has been effected.``There are some who transferred their licenses from one company to the other because they have secured partners; they are also sanctioned by refusing the transfer to happen.``We have many cases like that close to 10 also. We have 14 companies which had suffered one sanction or the other by denying them certain requirements or outright stop work order.``We operators working out this document, we see it as violation of the law and that is when we normally come in, to ensure compliance by way of writing them, he said.The acting director said once they failed to comply with the laws, it would attract sanction after serving them with series of letters.He advised mining companies to observe all the environmental obligations by working in line with the law, adding that the law was very clear as to what the obligations were.Adegboyega said that the Federal Government had earlier published the names of the companies involved this year, to create public awareness on environmental regulations among the miners.He said that the ministry would soon put in place mechanisms to sensitise the general public to how to produce those environmental documents.He appealed to the government to continue to support the solid mineral sector as the government had already made a policy statement to develop the sector in a way to support oil revenues.
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