Minerals and Energy Budget Vote

Kent Durr, MP


What can the Minister do to reduce the incredible bureaucracy surrounding the issuing of even simple mining licences, like the opening of a building-sand mine.

I do oversight in my constituency and I have been involved in trying to assist people, who comply in all respects for a licence, to obtain a licence to mine sand on their own property. It is a BEE project. The bureaucracy is simply unbelievable. It is almost impossible to make any progress. One is stifled at every turn. The department throws the book at one. We are having to transport building sand up to 50 kms in the meantime because of the incredible delays.

The officials of the Cape Town regional office of Mineral & Energy Affairs tell me that there is a backlog of thousands of applications.

I was approached last year in September by an applicant for a sandmine licence. An applicant who informs me that he/they have been shunted backwards and forwards by the local office of Mineral & Energy Affairs in Cape Town for some 18 months, but that his application is now being considered.

The applicants informed me that they complied with every requirement that they were called upon to comply with. The application had been sent to Pretoria last year in October, but they seemed to receive no response.

The consultant they have been advised to employ could not help them either.
I approached the parliamentary officer in January. I must have phoned her a dozen times. She responded once to my calls and gave me the name of the D.G. Mr Tcha Tcha, who she said was dealing with the matter.

The D.G. was charming and helpful and after a few weeks informed me of the name of the Chairman of our evaluation committee who was dealing with the matter.

I telephoned this man and was told he had ‘thousands’ of applications to consider and could not help me. I persevered and I think the D.G. also spoke to him.
After about a month he relented and told me that the matter was receiving his consideration. A few weeks later, after I spoke to the D.G. again, the official responded to my call and said the application had been processed and returned to the Regional Office in Cape Town. I phoned the official responsible in Cape Town who informed me that he had a huge number of applications to process and could not guarantee when he could look at the application in question. I pointed out to him the importance of the matter to the local community.

He promised he would deal with it in the following week. He did not. I phoned again the following week. He then informed me he really would deal with it.

I understand however that another technicality arose with the application and also that the applicants needed to attend with their lawyers so that the permission finally could be notarially signed.

Then the applicants need to go back to Pretoria within 30 days to have the deed registered. After that they would be able to commence work.

Minister, how are we ever going to roll back the frontiers of poverty with this kind of regulatory obstruction to progress? With this kind of delay. With these add-on costs?

Recently the newspapers reported that some 3000 mining prospecting licence applications are locked in the system. There is gridlock! Our gold production is at 1931 levels, but no serious prospecting has been done for 20 years and the applications to prospect are apparently locked in the system.

Unemployment in the mines is rife and this is aggravated by an apparent snarl up in approving prospecting licence applications and thus securing the long term future of this industry.

Many foreign would-be investors have simply packed up. Even South African mining houses are simply doing more prospecting in Tanzania, Ghana, Russia and South America.

Again, what is the Minister doing about it, to alleviate these bottlenecks?
What I am going to talk about now involves this Minister, the Minister of Public Enterprises and the Minister of the Environment.

The minister of Public Enterprises has recently announced the re-commissioning of certain previously mothballed electric, coal-fired, power stations.

Which power stations and which coal mines are involved and where are they located? Will the power station at Athlone in Cape Town be involved at any time in the re-commissioning process? What has changed?

These power stations were thought to be inefficient and were heavy polluters at the time of their de-commissioning.

What exactly is there to be done to modify the plants so as to cut down pollution to more acceptable levels. Are scrubbers to be added (and at what cost) and has the government and Eskom considered adding lances to inject urea based additive spray (SCR & SNCR technology) into the flues to reduce the NOX; and/or powder sprays to reduce the SOX, where necessary? If not, why not?

The power stations in the north are terrific sources of acid rain, particularly in the Mpumalanga area.

Is the Minister aware of the NOXout and SOXout retrofitted, cost effective, low cost technology with a small footprint, to make the advisable required deep cuts in NOX and SOX. (We need to heed what Sir David King has been saying on global warming recently).

Also it is vital that this is attended to because in Cape Town, during an inversion, the Athlone power station was always a major contributor to smog with considerable attendant chest complications for the public.

Can the Minister tell us more?