Government seeks to curb tin illegal mining
Friday, December 14 2001 - 01:57 AM WIB
?The decree is being drafted. We hope to finalize it today (Thursday) or tomorrow (Friday),? the minister told reporters at the palace.
Rini said under the new decree, tin will be categorized as a strategic commodity. As such, the central government will take over the regulation of the industry from the regions.
She also said the decree might ban the exportation of tin sands, which analysts blame as the main culprit behind the rampant tin illegal mining in Bangka and Belitung islands in South Sumatra.
The illegal mining has paralyzed production at publicly listed state-owned company PT Timah and Indonesian-Australian joint venture PT Kobatin operating on both islands.
The illegal mining has also caused an oversupply of tin products on the world market, which then put pressure on the commodity?s price.
In a related development, the South Sumatra police said it would send a letter to the minister, asking her to review the ministerial decree which categorizes tin as a non-strategic commodity and allows regions to issue licenses for tin exports, according to Kompas daily .
South Sumatra?s police chief Inspector General Didi Widayadi, said Thursday in the provincial capital of Palembang that the Decree No. 146/1999 was blamed for the widespread illegal mining activities on both islands, which has made the government to lose a lot of revenue from tin mining and resulted in environmental destruction in the areas.
He said the local police had recently nabbed two tin sand exporters and a foreign unlicensed miner as part of the efforts to curb tin sand exports from the province.
He noted that following the issuance of the ministerial decree, the regional authorities had issued licenses for small-scale miners to export tin sands with each of them having to pay Rp 1,000 (about 10 U.S. cents) per kilogram in retribution to the regional administrations. The number of small scale mining groups, which are locally called ?unconventional miners?, has since increased from 400 to 6,000 now.
Didi said it was not easy to crack down on the ?illegal mining? because local governmental officials as well as the workers of Timah and Kobatin were suspected to be involved in the activities. (Godang)