Officers of the committee said that the standing committee will decide sometime soon whether parliament will discuss the government endorsed draft legislation.

B. Bilegbayar, an Officer of the Geology, Mining and Heavy Industry department of the Ministry of Industry and Trade said, “In 2005, we held discussions three times where artisanal miners, ninjas as they are commonly referred to, attended including representatives of governmental and non-governmental organizations.”

“The working group developed the draft law based on the comments and issues that were being expressed during the discussions,” he told MonInfo.

“Artisanal miners were determined as a community consisting of artisanal miners, local governments and licensed companies based on volunteer and cooperative operation of citizens in order to mine minerals and they are required to have official registration,” says the draft law on artisanal miners.

Local governments will bear a certain amount of control over these communities. It is also indicated in the 9^th clause that land allocation will be available to these communities through contracts with the license holder to work on parts of its concessions where mining would be impossible otherwise, and by permission of the local government to work on parts of returned concessions.

The unit of area to be allocated would be up to 0.005 hectares per member of the mining community and no more than 0.5 hectares per partnership community.

“The main purpose of the law is to register those ninjas because they are unknown when they operate their mining, in particular they migrate a lot during summer time,” said Bilegbayar.

“We have to register them in order to provide social and health care for them. They expressed that they want to send their children to schools and they wanted to be under governmental security, including police.”

Government statistics estimate that the number of illegal and artisanal miners have swollen to an estimated 250,000 individuals during past years and inhabit 16 of Mongolia’s 21 provinces.

The draft law on artisanal miners was discussed by the Government cabinet on August 2nd where they decided to submit a draft law to Parliament’s fall session.

Officials from the Mongolian Employers Association told MonInfo in early August that local mining companies themselves are creating informal miners. Because local companies in the extractive industry lack advanced technology to adequately process the soil and there is no land rehabilitation. Mineral content leftovers are encouraging individual and illegal miners to go to work, citing one example as the Zaamar area.

“Land rehabiliation will be coordinated by the contract made between tri-parties; local government, artisanal miners and licenced companies,” said Bilegbayar.

“This law has a specific feature that local governments have authority.”