By Isaac Zulu
Green Party leader Peter Sinkamba has said that the liquidation of Konkola Copper Mines that was initiated by the Patriot Front government was illegal.
Sinkamba, in an interview, says that the liquidation of KCM, which was under the management of Vendatta Resources, was an illegality because the then regime, opted to use the Insolvent Act, which he said was not applicable to the provisional liquidation of a company.
“As Green Party, we have been consistent on the liquidation of Konkola Copper Mines since 2019. We gave our position to the then government that the liquidation of KCM that they were taking; using the Insolvent Act, was an illegality,” Sinkamba explained. “And we did advise that the provisional liquidation of KCM, which led to prolonged court processes, would take long and, at the same time; prove to be costly to government through ZCCM-IH to pay huge sums of dollars in litigation.
He also pointed out that the then PF government should have used the Mines and Minerals Development Act, which would have triggered the provisions Environmental Protection Fund; leading to what he termed “closure of the mine.”
“I want to speak as a person who has been in the mining industry and has been involved in the development of the Mines and Minerals Act from 1995 to date. And as a party, we advised them that the Insolvent Act is not applicable to the provisional liquidation of a company in the mining sector because taking that route to wrestle assets from KCM was going to be illegal and would be costly to the government in the near future,” Sinkamba said. “In the mining sector what you use when winding up a company is the Mines and Minerals Development Act that speak to the liquation to the winding up operations in the mining sector; which will then trigger some specific provisions in the Environmental Protection Fund.”
He said that the Green Party advised the Patriot Front government to accept the $1.5 billion for the recapitalization of KCM as per decision of the Court of Appeals here in Zambia, but that matter even went to the South Africa where it was prounced that the (Zambian) government was wrong. And as we speak from $1.5 billion Vendata will now only be able to pay $1 billion.”
He also said that even the receivership approach that the UPND administration wanted to take when trying to address the issues surrounding the operations of Konkola Copper Mines was equally an illegality.
“The receivership that they decided to take on of a mining company was also illegal… it’s out of the law. We hope that the UPND administration has drawn lessons from what transpired during the liquidation of Konkola Copper Mines. If they had taken the Mines and Minerals Development Act, Vedatta would have gone a long time ago,” said Sinkamba. “And going forward, we would like to see government to draw lessons and come up with policy pronouncements that would accelerate mining development.”
