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"id": 1522981,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1522981/?format=api",
"text_counter": 425,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Tinderet, UDA",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Julius Melly",
"speaker": null,
"content": "It also addresses the smelting, fabrication, homogenising, sampling, registration, monitoring and even transportation of gold products and related products. This country has been accused of being a hub for gold syndicates. This has happened because young Kenyans, Kenyans and even the leaders in this country do not know the kind of gold products, the quantity and quality of gold products, or even how to handle fraudsters. Clauses 5 to 23 of the Bill seek to establish the Gold Processing Corporation. It establishes the board and its functions. It also goes ahead to indicate the headquarters of the corporation and comes up with the Chief Executive of the corporation, who will be a Director- General. In that particular case, it will ensure that there is a board responsible for all the gold processing and gold products in this part of the world, set standards and even have expert staff. It is well known that most of the gold processing in this country, like in Tinderet, Migori and even in Ikolomani, where my colleague comes from, is very rudimentary. Locals go to the river basins with their rudimentary implements, with some even digging up very unsafe mines that often collapse killing a number of them. It is time we regulated this and set standards. Whom do we license to procure and process gold? It should be somebody who has enough money, good machinery and expertise to ensure that the safety and lives of the miners are taken care of. It is through this Bill that we also need to look into, and I think I will be proposing an amendment to this Bill, the insurance companies. If you go to Migori, like I have, gold mining is done on the roadsides. It creates huge gullies. When they are mining, there are a lot of chemicals used, like cyanide which is very dangerous for animals as well as for human beings. The environmental impact assessment needs to be done before companies are set-up. Some of the chemicals they use are very poisonous. Other issues that I want to bring to the attention of this is that from Clause 24 to 27, the Bill tries to provide for the financial provisions of the board and this one is very important because as much as we are setting up this board, and I want us to really look at it going forward in setting up other boards, it should be a board that is not coming out to seek for funds from the Exchequer every other time. It should be a board that uses its own levies, its own way of collecting revenue and should develop itself. We need to learn this from other big mining corporations like De Beers Group in South Africa, the big gold trading companies of the world, which do not depend on a national Exchequer. It is able to run by itself, pay salaries, run its affairs and fully operate without having the dependency on the national treasury to run its operations. I want also to say that from Clause 28 to 42, the Bill provides for the application of the licence, restriction in respect to processing, and consideration of applications. I just said in my introductory remarks that if you go to several areas of this country, you will find that foreigners have just walked in at times, colluded with some people in the provincial administration, set up illegal mining, and robbed this country of wealth. There are rare earth metals maybe in Garissa, some in Taita-Taveta and many parts of this country. This is the time to really make sure that any form of prospecting or licensing and any form of trying to establish a mineral processing plant, has to be very clear how you are establishing and running them plus how you are making sure that we have a benefit for our country. I also say that in the other issues on record keeping, and even declaring the results, in the Mining Act, most of the time declaration of the proceeds has been left to the processor. The processor can under-declare at the expense of the resources of this country. So, I want to say that I shall be proposing a number of amendments to this Bill. On those particular areas, I want us to say that this Bill is very important. It is going to assist us to run the gold processing activities. But in the same breadth, we need to develop other Bills that give establishment of functions or running of other minerals like oil. Thank you, Hon.Temporary Speaker. I support. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}