SITUATION ANALYSIS OF THE SMALL-SCALE GOLD ... - WWF

To issue licenses to small-scale miners of indigenous origin
The professional staff of the regional units would report to a Regional Units Manager,
who in turn would report to the Mining Department Director. The proposed Minerals
Institute was never realized, thus the infrastructure and assistance program for SSM never
came into existence.
In the latest draft mining code the matter of technical assistance disappeared altogether
from the text. This could mean that members of the Society of Geologists (Maatschap
der Geologen) who drafted the code ascribe to the view stated in the explanatory note of
the 1986 code that SSM waste valuable resources since it is on the way out, and should
not be encouraged. Alternatively the view could have prevailed that its is not the
responsibility of the NH to train small-scale miners, but the tasks of the Ministry of
Education and Community Development, or that it should be a private sector initiative or
an activity undertaken by a miners association. This is a complex policy issue that should
be discussed and debated among stakeholders in the sector. Clearly it will not be possible
to incorporate the matter of certification and training at the legislative level in a sensible
manner without at least an approved policy directive that also addresses the issue of
technical assistance.
Again, we see how the failure to better classify and define the sub-sectors wrecks havoc
with attempts to draft acceptable mining legislation. Clearly it is going to be difficult to
demand certification of very small-scale miners, although most of the 600 or more
hydraulic operations in the interior are powerful enough to do considerable damage to the
environment. Some sort of regulation has to be phased into existence, better sooner than
later. But how is the government to hold these mining units to standards if there is no
institution that sets the standards, and if there is no way to train miners to meet the
specified requirements?
It is difficult to predict what the outcome of the policy debates would be regarding the
certification and training of miners. The point is that some form of control is needed for
the larger “small-scale” mining operations, because technological advances have
produced mining units that are powerful enough to process 50 to 150 cubic meters of ore
weekly and even remove much larger quantities of top soil. When ten or twenty units are
working in an area, the levels of deforestation, disturbed top soil and expelled effluent
and tailings can be quite large. Thousands of square kilometers of rainforest have been
turned into a devastated desert landscape with a disrupted hydrology and abandoned
mining pits that form polluted ponds full of green algae, and yet provisions to regulate
hydraulic mining are conspicuously lacking from the latest draft law. The most likely
reason is the fact that hydraulic mining has been lumped together with the various forms
of very SSM.
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