Government delays revoking non-C&C mining licenses
Friday, October 6 2017 - 01:28 AM WIB
The plan to revoke hundreds of so-called non-clear and clean (non-C&C) IUP mining business licenses have been delayed as the miners have filed lawsuit with the court, Bisnis Indonesia reported on Friday.
The paper quoted Director General of Mineral and Coal at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Bambang Gatot Ariyono as saying that according to existing regulation, provincial administrations hold the authority in revoking the IUP licenses, but the planned move has to be delayed pending final court ruling.
The provincial administrations were supposed to start revoking the non-C&C mining licenses last month in the hope that the ?problematic? mineral and coal mines have been resolved by the end of this year as previous deadlines have been repeatedly missed.
The government for the past few years has been struggling to clean up the country?s messy mining sector resulting from the aggressive issuance of IUP mining licenses by local governments in the past often in breach of existing regulations such as issuing licenses for new concessions that are actually located in protected or conservation forest areas, or overlap with concessions already owned by other miners or companies. The issuance of the licenses have also often lack the proper required documents, and many of the miners have failed to pay financial obligations to the state, prompting the entry of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) into the affairs.
The government has repeatedly missed the target to resolve the non-C&C IUP mining licenses, with the government recently set a new deadline to finally revoke by the end of this year all IUP licenses which remain in non-C&C status.
As per July 2017, out of the total 9,370 IUP mining licenses, 3,168 are still categorized as non-C&C.
According to a ministry announcement on Thursday, the provincial administrations recommended another 1,381 IUP licenses to get the C&C status. But following review by the ministry, only 90 IUP licenses were eligible to have the C&C status.
Bambang said that the ministry starting this month will no longer accept new recommendation for C&C status. (*)