The Ebonyi State Government sealed four mining businesses on Wednesday for failing to comply with the requirements of the state’s Community Development Agreements.<\/p>\n
The CDA is intended to ensure that mining firms contribute to the growth of the communities in which they operate.<\/p>\n
Hon. Chidi Onyia, Commissioner for Solid Minerals and Natural Resources, chaired the joint task force that sealed the corporations. He explained that the miners had adequate opportunity to comply with the arrangement but failed to do so.<\/p>\n
“The companies were given sufficient time, since July last year, to meet the CDA requirements but chose to ignore the rules,” he told me.<\/p>\n
Anli Mining and Investment Ltd, China Solid Rock 1 and 2 in Ngodo Amachi, Afikpo Local Government Area, and Shenglong Mining in Eziulo, Ishielu Local Government Area, are among the enterprises affected.<\/p>\n
According to the commissioner, the sites will stay closed until the corporations follow the state government’s directions.<\/p>\n
He stated, \u201cThe people of Ebonyi are being treated as if they have no value. The Mining Act clearly stipulates that every miner must prepare a CDA to benefit and uplift the community in which they operate. However, most mining companies in Ebonyi State have disregarded this. This is against the state\u2019s directives, and we will no longer tolerate it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe land belongs to the people. Even though these companies have leased land from the Federal Government, they must ensure that the communities benefit from their operations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Onyia criticised one of the site operators, labelling its CDA as fraudulent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe agreement presented by Shenglong is fraudulent. There are clear procedures and templates for developing a CDA. How can a company of this size justify the community\u2019s sole benefit as being one million naira annually?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have companies here in Ebonyi constructing tarred roads for their host communities. Why is Shenglong different?\u201d he queried.<\/p>\n
He stated that the state government will continue to supervise mining activities to ensure that all enterprises followed the law, and warned that any company found to be breaking the regulations would be closed down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Ebonyi State Government sealed four mining businesses on Wednesday for failing to comply with the requirements of the state’s Community Development Agreements. The CDA is intended to ensure that mining firms contribute to the growth of the communities in which they operate. Hon. Chidi Onyia, Commissioner for Solid Minerals and Natural Resources, chaired the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":49849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49848"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49858,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49848\/revisions\/49858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}