Locals turned into squatters as mining firms take over Karamoja

Efforts. A Karimojong woman works at a stone quarry in Kosiroi Village, Moroto District, on September 13. FILE PHOTOS

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Part II. As relative peace returns to Karamoja after the UPDF disarmament programme, a new activity now poses an existential threat to the residents. After the discovery of huge deposits of minerals, speculators and investors have rushed to the sub-region and fenced off large swathes of land in anticipation of a windfall. In the second part of the story: ’Karamoja Treasure: A diamond in the rough”, locals face the threat of being turned into squatters on their own land, writes Emmanuel Mutaizibwa.

Across Karamoja’s sprawling mines are labour camps where locals spend days hacking at the earth tucked away beneath the emerald hills and rugged landscape. Scores of men, women and children inside the bowels of the earth dig the surface without any protective gear. Across the pits is a life of ruin and misery that has left its victims in a state of squalour and despair.
Those providing cheap labour are unaware that there is a scramble for mineral wealth worth billions of shillings led by multinational corporation capital.
But for the locals, this mineral wealth shimmers like a mirage in a desert. Many remain enveloped in poverty as the minerals are carted off towards Kampala and others are shipped outside the country.
Nobody knows how much of this mineral wealth leaves this poorest part of the country.

This is the pent-up frustration that has elicited strong condemnation from leaders in Karamoja, including the Ethics minister, Rev Fr Simon Lokodo.
“We condemn this in the strongest terms. We have learnt that 90 per cent of Karamoja land has been apportioned to investors even without the knowledge of the people and I know, for example, of an investor who has the entire sub-county of Rupa all in his hands without considering the settlement, the infrastructure, the health centres, the education centres. Another sub-county of Namalu was also taken. This is not fair,” he says.

Fr Lokodo seems to have fired a veiled salvo at the Chinese-owned Sunbelt company, which has been mining marble in Rupa Sub-county for export. The company, whose activities are quite opaque, enjoys protection from the army, which has established a roadblock towards the mining site.
Tepeth County MP Albert Lokuru says the secrecy in the Karamoja extractive sector is driven by an agenda to grab land.

At work. A woman carries containers bearing stones in Moroto District.


“It is unfortunate that instead of cooperating with people, they [investors] came and fenced off the entire area and don’t allow the communities or even interact with them. It looks like a form of land grabbing where they came in the name of mining and then later they say that they have acquired the land. It appears there is a kind of a way investors are coming to acquire land in the name of minerals. But the people of Karamoja are now alert. The communities through awareness creation are now getting concerned,” Mr Lokuru says.
Mr Fredrick Ssemwanga, a lawyer with a keen interest in the extractives sector, says government should promote transparency in the mining sector in Karamoja.

“We need to get access to the engagement agreements between the government and all mining companies such that the people, including the lowest person in the community, is able to know the entitlements of the mining companies, those of the district, the sub-county and the local community. Government is a trustee of these minerals on behalf of the public,” Mr Ssemwanga says.

Government efforts
The Permanent Secretary in the Energy ministry, Mr Robert Kasande, reveals that plans are underway to establish Karamoja’s mineral potential.
“We carried out aerial surveys for 80 per cent of Uganda, save for Karamoja because the security pertaining at that time couldn’t allow us to get financing. So in that regard, the potential of Karamoja has not been well known. Luckily we have found funding from the Spanish government who have come with a company from Spain and when that is done, we will get to understand the potential of Karamoja,” he says.
Mr Kasande says government has extended power lines and built modern roads in Karamoja and will compel companies with mining leases to undertake feasible corporate social responsibility in the area. Fr Lokodo, agrees that government has established schools and health centres in Karamoja after relative peace returned but needs to do more to improve the livelihood of the locals.

Cabinet recently approved an airborne geological and geophysical survey mapping for Karamoja. Daily Monitor has learnt that the cost of the airborne geological survey is now contested. This is after a whistle-blower authored a letter, which shows huge disparities in the cost of the airborne survey as the taxpayer stands to lose about Shs60 billion. It is common practice that supremacy fights to win tenders in Uganda are usually at the behest of commission agents who inflate such costs.
According to the whistleblower report, a Spanish firm, Xcalibur, proposed to carry out an airborne survey for Karamoja at a price of Euros 20m (about Shs80.3b). Another Shs12 billion was included in the budgetary allocation for Financial Year 2019/2020 for the airborne survey, bringing the total cost to Shs93b.

Survey disparities
Another British firm, SRK ES, offered to carry out the airborne geological survey at a much cheaper cost - $9.6 million (Shs36 billion).
According to the whistleblower, the British firm made a technical presentation to the Directorate of Geological Survey and Mines at their offices in Entebbe on March 13. The firm also offered to develop a minerals strategy for the ministry, establish a digital cadastre system, a geoportal / digital data storage framework and market Uganda abroad as a destination for mineral exploration.
However, it is not clear yet why the Spanish firm’s proposal was ring-fenced and rushed to Cabinet yet their price was much higher than the British firm’s proposal by Shs60 billion. On July 23, the Secretary to the Treasury, Mr Keith Muhakanizi, authored a letter in response to the whistleblower’s report addressed to the Finance ministry.

Beneficiaries. A truckload of stones leaves a quarry in Moroto District, on September 13.

“The ministry is in receipt of a confidential report from the whistleblower indicating that the current estimated cost approved by Cabinet is exaggerated by Shs60 billion. The report further indicates that your ministry refused to consider a proposal from another company, which would carry out the same activities at a cost of $9.6m compared to $20.6m estimated by Xcalibur,” Mr Muhakanizi’s letter reads in part.
He implores the ministry to explain the difference in cost for the project as alleged by the whistleblower and provide assurance that there is no unjustified cause for the ministry not to proceed with Xcalibur.

If Shs60 billion was to be saved in the coffers, it could build dams and silos to store foodstuffs and save scores of Karimojong from capitulating to a slow and agonising death as a result of starvation. Large tracts of land have been subjected to environmental degradation as a result of mining activities and much of it is not productive for farming. As degradation takes its toll on the land so are the spaces of their crumbling manyattas, which continue to narrow as fortune seekers gaze down from the crest of hills in Karamoja in admiration of the vast expanse endowed with mineral wealth.
For one to understand this scramble for mineral wealth, they ought to look at the companies listed on the Karamoja mining concessions list as of April 2018.

Exploration firms
Scores of firms by then had acquired exploration licences, location licences and mining leases, some of which have expired. By totalling up the number of square kilometres allocated for these licences, Daily Monitor was able to estimate that about 3. 7 million acres was parcelled out for these mining activities. An acre is equivalent to a football pitch.
For residents, whose main source of living is nomadic pastoralism, this means that large chunks of their land, including grazing areas and water sources, have been fenced off to allow mining activities.
“They have taken advantage of the sleeping Karimojong; they are now squatters in their own cradle of land. If these people are kind enough, why don’t they come and do the extraction and the processing of the materials in Karamoja so as to create employment? This unfairness should be stopped,” Fr Lokodo says.

He cites an example of a company that was given a mining lease for limestone and is “now excavating marble for export”.
Speculators have also rushed into the business acquiring licences on behalf of their masters, which they later sell to investors. It is not clear yet whether there is any due diligence carried out before one can be issued a licence. The Energy ministry is planning to introduce a raft of changes and amending the mining law to tighten the licensing process.
“Going forward, we are doing a number of changes, there are many reforms in the sector. We are looking at the draft of the new mining Bill that we expect to come out this year. We are proposing that the rules of engagement will be competitive. The ministry will identify an area and say this place is up for licence, which has not been the case,” Mr Kasande says.

He also reveals that the acquisition of a licence will now be conducted online. “Licences will be applied for, the required fees paid for online and even licence management [will be] online. In other words by the click of the button, we will be able to know that licence X is meant to pay their annual fees. Many people have defaulted. That will go away once this system is launched and we have been advertising that by the end of this month everybody must transform and go on that system. We think that it will harmonise and bring sanity into the sector,” Mr Kasande says.

But the consequences of a non-restrictive licensing regime remain evident. For instance, Oli Gold Muruli owned by John Muruli, John Muyambi, and Patricia Gold M, Turyakira Carol, who are students, was given an exploration licence in 2015 for base metals, gold, rare earth elements, and uranium and platinum group metals. The licence expired on January 13, 2018. It is not clear yet whether it was renewed. How could students acquire an exploration licence for minerals? Did they have capital to invest in such a capital intensive venture?

Among those who have acquired several exploration licences and mining licences is Pastor Samuel Kakande of Synagogue Church of All Nations and his protege Pastor Johnson Muwanguzi Kato.
Kakande owns 80 per cent stake in Mechanised Agro (U) Ltd while Pastor Muwanguzi owns 100 per cent in his mining firm. Among the minerals they were prospecting for since 2015 include base metals, dimension stone, Platinum Group Metals, precious metals, rare earth metals and uranium.

Simon Lokodo, Ethics minister

“Every individual who has the right credentials; financial, technical can apply for a licence. What you wouldn’t want to do is for people without prior information in the sector. But a pastor, why not? He is a Ugandan. I want to think that a minister in some other ministry who has no prior information, could also apply [for a licence],” Mr Kasande says. Fr Lokodo, who has previously owned an exploration licence for base metals and gold in Karamoja, says a commission of inquiry should be sanctioned to establish the truth. “Absolutely, government should come in and establish who has usurped the rights and privileges of the people of Karamoja and such people should be brought to book and those licences cancelled to allow the people to enjoy what God has given to them as a heritage.”

For now, its commonplace for locals to find strangers exploring their land for minerals. “Take for example an investor is issued a licence without the consultation of the local communities. He goes straight to access the site and the people resist. A case in point is Rupa, where Dao Marble was rejected, let us involve the local communities. It is not true that we are rejecting investors, but we are questioning the manner in which it is done. Let us ensure that the people where minerals are have a stake,” Mr Lokuru says.

What will be left of the once beautiful landscape where men returned their cattle to the kraals and reclined on headrest stools to share folk stories at the fireplace?
With the mining sector pushing the Karimojong into the deeper recesses as they are subjected to the most egregious forms of labour exploitation, what remains of Karamoja is a barren land pockmarked with pits that once served as grazing land.

Growth index
Poverty. The proportion of Karimojong trapped in chronic poverty is at 24 per cent, twice higher more the national average of 10 per cent, according to the Uganda National Household Survey 2016/17.
Literacy. The overall literacy rate for Karamoja stands at only 25 per cent, compared to 94 per cent in Kampala, while 60 per cent of women in the sub-region are unable to read and write. Eighty six per cent of the young population in Karamoja have never been to school.

MINING REQUIREMENTS
Requirements for acquiring a prospective licence are;
1. A valid ID (passport, driving permit, national ID).
2.A filled form 1 of the Mining Regulations, 2004.
3. Payment of Shs500,000 as statutory fee.
4. A certified copy of certificate of incorporation/registration.
5. A certified copy of articles of association and memorandum of association/constitution.
Requirements for an exploration licence are Shs500,000 as registration fees, Shs1m as application fees and Shs2m for preparation for renewal of an exploration licence. Others are Shs50,000 per square km as mineral rent annually, Shs75,000 per square km as mineral rent annually for first renewal, Shs100,000 per square km as mineral rent annually for second renewal and Shs300,000 for gazetting grant of exploration licence.