...just to give clarity on the reasons for the return of the MPRDA Amendment Bill. This House will recall that in 2014 the MPRDA was passed in a rush and the new Minister in 2014, former Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi said that he wished that the former president would not sign that Bill into law so that it could be returned to the House. That would provide him with the opportunity to draw a separation that would see traditional minerals remaining as part of that Bill, but develop a new legislation in relation to oil and gas.
When the Bill was unfortunately brought back by the President it had four reasons as to why he did not sign: one, it was substantive issues; the first one was the issue of the international trade agreement where they said that it couldn't pass the constitutional master. The second one was the discretion on the issue of BEE codes which was given to the Minister. One of the two most important ones which I think all of us should agree on, was the issue of public participation.
The President at that time said that there was not enough consultation in the National Council of Provinces and therefore,
opportunity must be given to the National Council of Provinces to deal with the matter. Secondly, in that regard of public participation was the issue that there was no consultation with the National House of Traditional Leaders, hence he returned the Bill. No other justification can be given.
When that Bill was referred to the NCOP, it could not reconcile and agree and it almost at the tail-end of the Fifth Parliament. The Minister made a recommendation to the President that the Bill is withdrawn so that it could be started afresh and that's the reason the Bill was not passed. When we make our own opportunistic statements we should understand that the truth remains the truth. I know that the truth is sometimes painful because those who have turned themselves into habitual liars are not prepared to take it.
The most important issue that we recommend is that the Department must deal very effectively with is the issue of illegal mining and there are many aspects in illegal mining. Amongst those is to deal with the issue of closure of mines because part of the attraction in the mining industry is an
understanding that as long as there is a commodity beneath the soil, it will be difficult to avoid the question of illegal mining. This includes access of communities to mining rights in other communities. Secondly, we say there must be clarity and timeframes on the beneficiation strategy.
We say that there must be an alignment of bursaries by the department so that we can deal with the problem of scarce skills. We must be able to address the issue of occupational diseases that continues to befall our people even post mining. We have requested that the department must present a comp ... Only a nation that remains a caring nation will understand a problem of Lily Mine. We say there must be a comprehensive on how to address the crisis of Lily Mine and consequences thereof.
Therefore, Chairperson, we want to move and support Budget Vote
29 on the basis that it has a limitation, but we must make one reservation that must be noted. We say it is going to be difficult when look at how the budget is done. There has to be a deliberate focus of investing on the productive sectors of our economy so that we can be able to generate revenue to subsidise.
In the manner in which budget at times is done, our concern is that we seem to be cutting more on the productive sectors of our economy which will have a ripple effect on the way we move forward in addressing our social needs as a government. Thank you very much. We move and support Budget Vote 29.