Violations in many localities
A representative of the Department of Environmental Crime Prevention and Control (C05) of the Ministry of Public Security said that the current situation of illegal mineral exploitation is complicated, focusing on coal, soil, sand, stone and metal mining activities. In 2022, the national police discovered 3,738 violations of the law related to mineral exploitation, transportation, and gathering and trading; thereby imposing fines of more than 78 billion VND and prosecuting 46 cases of tax evasion and violations of regulations on resource exploitation.
Water Team I (Traffic Police Department, Ministry of Public Security) caught an illegal sand dredging ship in Hung Yen on November 24.
In sand mining activities, the representative of C05 said that in addition to illegal mining and mining in unlicensed areas, there are still violations by licensed mines. For example, mining units take advantage of river terrain to mine in excess of quantity, capacity, and depth, or do not place buoys to mark the mining area, such as on the Red River, the section bordering Hanoi, Phu Tho, and Hung Yen.
Illegal sand mining on rivers has decreased, but illegal sand mining at sea is showing signs of becoming more complicated. Subjects use large-volume ships to illegally mine sand, then legalize its origin and transport it to sell to construction works and projects in Ho Chi Minh City and Hai Phong.
Some localities have a situation of widespread stone mining licensing, one area but many licenses are granted to many businesses, leading to the inability to apply large-scale mining technology, mining not in accordance with mine design. This affects the efficiency of mineral mining activities, the environment and causes labor safety.
These violations even occurred in large mines licensed by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment; for example, Duyen Ha Company Limited exploited limestone without a safety corridor during mining, causing landslides that buried protective forests many times, negatively affecting the environment and people's lives. In particular, some quarries also exploited millions of tons of stone beyond their licensed capacity each year to produce cement, making illegal profits.
In land exploitation activities, recently, the demand for construction and leveling has increased, so the situation of land exploitation has become complicated in most localities. For profit, subjects take advantage of lax management to illegally exploit land in places far from residential areas; take advantage of projects to exploit poor soil and ore to sell to cement factories as additives, sell to brick factories to gain illegal profits without applying for mining licenses as prescribed.
Coal mining activities also have many violations. Many mines do not fully comply with environmental protection regulations and use incorrect licenses. Subjects also take advantage of policies to prolong mining time, illegally gather, causing loss of resources and complicating security and order.
Clarify manager responsibilities
To avoid resource "bleeding" and budget loss, the representative of C05 said that they regularly monitor, prevent, and combat crimes related to mineral exploitation activities. At the same time, they advise the Government to amend and supplement the shortcomings and limitations in legal documents related to mineral exploitation activities to suit the reality.
In addition, C05 has advised the Ministry of Public Security to direct local police to proactively make plans, in which based on the functions and tasks of each force, they assign and decentralize specific tasks. Directed to strengthen the review and identification of complicated routes of mineral exploration, exploitation and trading activities to investigate in accordance with the assignment and decentralization.
Repair facilities, shipyards, port managers, mineral-using projects, etc. must also be investigated in order to classify and develop management plans. Local police chiefs and those involved in local management, if they allow complicated and prolonged illegal mineral exploitation to occur, affecting security and order, must clarify their responsibilities in order to take action.
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