By Bernard Lugongo
The Citizen Reporter
Dar es Salaam. The Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) is planning to take the government to court should it go ahead with uranium mining projects in Bahi and Manyoni districts in Dodoma and regions respectively.

The LHRC cautioned yesterday that it was against the projects because they would lead to serious health and environmental impacts on the people living in the area.

Addressing reporters in Dar es Salaam on behalf of the LHRC executive director, Mr Harold Sungusia, who is LHRC’s director of Advocacy and Reforms, said the Centre had established that there would be negative implications after it made a follow up on uranium exploration in the areas said to have reserves of the mineral.

“We don’t have to think of relocating people from these areas because we have past experience on how the issue of compensating becomes problematic,” said Mr Sungusia, who is the LHRC’s director of advocacy and reforms.However, the government has no plan to provide alternative safe residences or compensate the residents of the area when the mining activities begin.

For other areas, apart from the two districts, the government would take prior measures before implementing the mining activities. LHRC said experts must be fully consulted to determine environmental effects in order to identify short and long-term effects associated with uranium mining, noting that the issue of uranium mining should go hand in hand with education regarding effects and benefits of the activities.

LHRC also asked the government to learn from other nations, such as Niger, that have already experienced negative effects of uranium mining.Reached for comment, the deputy minister for Energy and Minerals, Mr Adam Malima, said the mining activities would not have any impact on the people since the minerals would only be produced in their raw form.

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