BUJUMBURA November 10th (ABP) – The Ministry of Hydraulics, Energy and Mines through the Burundian Office of Mines (OBM), in collaboration with the international NGO pact Burundi, organized an awareness-raising workshop on the new production recording tool and its implication in the mineral supply chain, for the heads of the OBM service, the police, those of the national intelligence service, the heads of counters, heads of mining cooperatives, from the seven provinces in which Pact Burundi intervenes, namely Bubanza, Cibitoke, Gitega, Kayanza, Ngozi, Kirundo and Muyinga, to train them and make them aware of the new way of controlling the documents of transport and export of 3 TS minerals including Coltan, Cassiterite and Wolframite.
The director of geological research and mining cadastre at the OBM, Mr. Evelio Mushimantwari, who opened that meeting, first recalled that the government of Burundi is committed to fighting against illegal exploitation and trade. illicit minerals from the Great Lakes region. He also specified that the member states of the ICGLR approved in Lusaka, Zambia at the special summit of December 15, 2010, the six specific tools to fight against the illegal exploitation of natural resources in the Great Lakes region. He cited the regional certification mechanism, the harmonization of national laws, the regional database on the flow of minerals, the formalization of the artisanal mining sector, the promotion of the transparency initiative in the extractive industries, the mechanism of early warning. He mentioned that the government of Burundi has already started the implementation of those six tools through the promulgation of the new mining code of 2013 which is under revision, the development of a mining practice which is under revision, formalization of the artisanal mining sector by leaving artisanal miners to mining cooperatives, traceability and certification of minerals from 3 TS and others. He pointed out that the various documents that contribute to the mineral traceability activities have been completed on paper since 2014 until today. He added that after eight years of existence of the ITSCI project of the international NGO Pact Burundi which monitors and coordinates mineral traceability activities in collaboration with the Ministry in charge of Mines, technological advances are perpetual evolution.
According to Mushimantwari, to comply with these new technologies, improvements and facilities are necessary to facilitate activities relating to the traceability of minerals. For this reason, thanks to the NGO pact Burundi, an application has just been set up to facilitate the transmission of data and eliminate the potential problems of loss or damage that rain can cause on formerly used documents. This workshop made it possible to understand the importance of electronic data collection and the tools used for traceability in order to properly control the mineral circuit from the mining sites to the purchasing and export counters of the ores.
For Jean Baptiste Sabukwigura, country team leader in the NGO pact Burundi, he said that improvements will take place at the level of the document accompanying the minerals at the time of their transport and that at the level of the labels nothing will change. He indicated that the traceability activities of the minerals of 3 TS which are completed today on paper, will now be done using tablets.