Home Ministry to evaluate 1,000 mining regulations

The Home Affairs Ministry is evaluating at least 1,000 coal mining regulations issued by local governments both in provincial and regency levels in line with the newly issued Presidential Instruction which calls for the improvement in the supervision in the coal mining operation, Kontan reported on Wednesday.

Zudan Arif Fakrulloh, the head of the ministry?s legal bureau, said that the evaluation of the coal mining regulations was expected to be completed this year. ?We have established a special task force to carry out the evaluation job,? he added.

He said that the evaluation was carried out to ensure that all the mining regulations issued by the local governments were not against the existing laws such as the mining law and local tax and retribution law.

Local governments have for example issued many regulations requiring mining companies to pay different types of local taxes, which are against the law on local tax and retribution law, he said.

?If there are problematic regulations, they will be submitted to the local legislative council for a review or revocation,? he said.

Besides being against the existing laws, many mining regulations issued by the local governments are issued by irrelevant agencies. (*)