By Nosihle Shelembe
Pretoria - The Mineral Resources Portfolio Committee will develop a comprehensive plan to address challenges in the mining industry.
“As we go to the strategic planning, we should be able to come up with proposals of what has to be done… ours is to provide and do oversight,” Mineral Resources Portfolio Committee Chairperson Sahlulele Luzipo said.
The Committee on mineral resources met with stakeholders in the mining industry, on Wednesday, in Parliament.
“The intention of the meeting was to have an interactive session, look at the challenges that are facing the industry from the angle of all stakeholders.
“We invited both labour and employers to come and give us their perspective… to also tell us how they view the committee in terms of expectations of working with the committee,” Chairperson Luzipo said.
He described the meeting as informative and fruitful.
“There were quite a number of issues, some of the issues were cutting across or they were not primarily issues that can necessarily be resolved within the area of the scope of the committee,” Chairperson Luzipo said.
Some of the issues that were raised by the stakeholders in the mining industry included violence during strikes, tax, transfer pricing, foreign ownership, security of workers and environmental relations.
Chairperson Luzipo said some of the issues raised by the stakeholders could not be addressed by the committee as they were either labour issues or commercial in nature.
“Once you play your oversight role as a committee you also don’t want to find yourself over crouching into another territory that may not necessarily fall within your scope.
“So we don’t want….to find ourselves in what you call a turf exercise but we will do our best as we go to the strategic plan, we will be able to come up with proposals of what we think needs to be done,” he said. – SAnews.gov.za
