Bangka Belitung authority agrees to stop illegal tin mining

The ministry of energy and mineral resources and the provincial administration of Bangka Belitung province have reached an agreement to jointly curb the growing activities of illegal tin mining in the province, Bisnis Indonesia reported on Thursday.

Director General of Geology and Mineral Resources Simon Felix Sembiring said in Jakarta on Wednesday that under the agreement made on March 20, the Bangka Belitung administration also agreed to stop issuing new licenses for the establishment of new smelting plants.

Sembiring said that the central government had issued a number of regulations such as an export ban on tin ores in the past several years a bid to curb the growing illegal tin mining in the province. But such regulations have proven ineffective because most of the illegal tin miners faced no difficulties to smuggle their tin ores through Java or other part of Sumatra.

The illegal tin mining activities have even continued to grow after the local government allowed the local firms to build tin smelting plants. A number of smelters are now operating in the province to take the advantage of tin ores produced from illegal miners, which mostly operated in state owned tin mining company PT Timah's former mining sites.

Sembiring said that besides encouraging illegal tin mining activities, the operation of privately owned tin smelters have undermined the operation of PT Timah's tin smelting plant which is known worldwide for its high quality tin products.

To solve the problem, the Bangka Belitung provincial administration also agreed to regulate the operation of the privately owned tin plants by for example establishing a consortium that include the province's two major tin mining companies PT Timah and PT Koba Tin to operate the smelter plants, Sembiring.

In addition, according to Sembiring, the owners of the smelter plants should have their own tin mines if they wanted to continue their activities. (*)