The government has revoked over 1,500 licenses held by mining firms that failed to meet the set operation conditions.
The Ministry of Mining said some of the firms that have been issued with permits to prospect or undertake mining activities had been speculators waiting to sell them off and had not made investments as required by the terms of their licenses.
“If you have a permit or a license, you must demonstrate the compliances in order to retain it. In this category, we have identified over 1,500 licenses that are non-compliant. The freed areas shall be available for award to new applicants,” Mining Principal Secretary Elijah Mwangi said.
According to Mwangi, the cleanup was also aimed at removing expired licenses from the mining register and added that they had concluded a process of mapping out the country’s mineral resources through an airborne survey, during which it identified a total of 970 mineral occurrences, many of them concentrated around 15 counties.
Among the minerals found through the survey include coltan, copper, nickel, rare earth elements, manganese and uranium. The cleanup of the mining cadaster and the airborne survey were among the reasons the State suspended the issuance of new licenses to mining companies.
