The President of the Nigerian Mining and Geosciences Society, Prof Akinade Olatunji, has said the society will set up a committee that will draw a regulation paper and proffer solutions to the Federal Government on several loopholes affecting the mining sector.
He said that the committee would identify the weak areas in the sector and recommend lasting solutions to the government.
Speaking with Saturday PUNCH, Olatunji lamented that the lack of enforcement of mining laws and regulations had made the sector an easy-to-penetrate one, saying that strict implementation of such laws would signal that no violator would go unpunished.
He said, “We are trying to put up a committee in our society that will draw a regulation paper to be presented to the government on where we have identified those weak points where we see that there are lapses and recommend measures by which the government can overcome such lapses. So, we are going to do that very soon.”
Also, the President of the Nigerian Union of Mine Workers, Hamza Muhammed, noted that the Federal Government should regulate mining activities across the country by making membership of mining unions mandatory for partakers for ease of identification of mining violators.
He added that non-membership of mining organisations was an impediment for mining unions to identify illegal miners, urging the Federal Government to formulate a law to address the mining challenges.
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