JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Regional offices of the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) continue to experience chronic shortages of basic office supplies, such as paper and toner, a specialist mining and environmental law firm has confirmed.

At the time of going to press, however, the DMRE had not responded to questions put to it by Mining Weekly on what steps the department was taking to solve its printing problem, although it did acknowledge receipt of Mining Weekly’s email on the subject.

Mining Weekly sent the email to the DMRE after receiving complaints about printing currently being a major problem at a number of DMRE offices and also about the DMRE being unable to process vital resources applications owing to a shortage of paper and toner.

Specialist mining and environmental law firm Bishop Fraser Attorneys director Davide Bishop confirmed to Mining Weekly that various regional offices continue to experience chronic shortages of basic office supplies, such as paper and toner.

“This issue has existed for at least the previous three years, and as applications are processed across various internal DMRE departments, all of which are dependent upon hard copy documents, the shortage materially and detrimentally affects the application process,” Bishop explained.

Describing the situation as “dire”, Bishop pointed out that the application process is highly dependent on communication from the DMRE and that, without effective communication, the applicant cannot pursue the application within the legislated timelines, which commence upon the submission of any Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act application.

“In most instances, be it for acceptance, grant or any extension of timelines, the regional manager is required to sign a physical letter. Any delay has a hugely prejudicial impact on the applicant,” he emphasised.

Bishop said that, largely, the DMRE’s employees are as frustrated with the process as the applicant.

“Unfortunately, the onus has been placed on the applicant to assist with operational inefficiencies by printing documents for the DMRE, providing Internet access or otherwise providing the infrastructure that is currently lacking,” he said.

Bishop emphasised that the application process needs to be further and reliably digitised.

“This, and the current semi-remote working environment, requires the DMRE employees to have adequate access to data and be available to applicants via an easily obtainable cell phone number.

“Without a means to contact officials, it is very difficult to progress any application. In the previous year, the inability to access emails, virtual meetings or electronic documents has been a huge frustration,” he said.

AmaranthCX director Paul Miller stated in an emailed comment to Mining Weekly: “The DMRE is notorious for asking for additional paper copies of documents. I have always assumed it was because storage is chaotic and earlier copies had been lost, which might be the case, but it also appears that printing and copying within the department is currently in disarray, with printers often being broken or being out of toner or paper.”

PAPER-BASED APPLICATION PROCESS

In the parliamentary portfolio committee earlier this year, the DMRE disclosed that the entire internal application process is paper based, with the first step being to print out the reams of documents submitted via the Samrad cadastre system. 

At the same committee meeting, it was stated that the regional offices were short of the "tools of trade", which included laptops and working printers in the offices. It was stated that the DMRE was addressing the printer issue by procuring new printers and consumables through a transversal contract entered into by National Treasury.

In another parliamentary question response, long delays in the renewal of prospecting right applications were revealed, which puts a spotlight on lapses in the implementation of the "use-it-or-lose-it" principle.

TENDER FOR NEW CADASTRE SYSTEM

DMRE director-general Advocate Thabo Mokoena told this week’s Junior Indaba that a tender for a new modern cadastre system would be invited by the end of next week. Mokoena promised that the new cadastre system would provide reliable information on precise locations of exploration and mining rights, and would be transparent and accessible to the public and, more importantly, investors.

During the parliamentary portfolio committee meeting, the Minister committed the DMRE to ensure that the system would be in place within six months.

Accordingly, the DMRE was working hard, Mokoena said, towards meeting the time directive given it by the executive authority, and he disclosed that Minerals Council South Africa was also fully engaged in the process.

He described the much-criticised existing Samrad system as being no longer fit for purpose and said the process of replacing it with the modern cadastre system had been concluded.

South Africa’s huge mineral exploration and mining rights backlog reportedly stands at more than 5 000 unprocessed exploration applications and 235 unprocessed mining right applications.