T

he Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry will hold a series of meetings with other government agencies, including local governments, to settle mining disputes in the country, a senior ministry official said on Wednesday.

The ministry’s minerals and coal director general, Thamrin Sihite, said he had invited the Home Ministry with its related institutions, as well as governors, regents and mayors who administered mining operations to attend the meetings.

“We will hold the meetings in several phases. In the second week of September we will talk about disputes that occur in Kalimantan, then Sumatra in the fourth week,” he told a media gathering at his office in Jakarta on Wednesday.

He said the ministry would continue the meetings in the second week of October to deliberate disputes in Sulawesi, and later on for Papua and Maluku in its fourth week.

He added there would also be meetings to reconcile disputes in Java and Nusa Tenggara in the second week of November.

Thamrin further explained that from the meetings, the ministry also aimed to solve problems in the mining sector through clarifying overlapping mining areas, obtaining legal certainty and improving human resource capacity.

Indonesia has experienced a boom in mining permit issuance after it introduced a new mining law in 2009 that allows provincial administrations to issue new mining permits.

The ministry recorded that the number of new mining permits, locally termed IUP, had increased sharply, from only 597 permits in 2009, to 10,250 as of August 2011.

He acknowledged many mining permits overlapped with one another or with plantation areas due to poor mapping and poor monitoring systems. Local governments often issued mining permits in areas that had been awarded to other companies.

The government has, since last year, conducted an audit on the country’s mining areas in an effort to eliminate the mining dispute. But the ministry said that only 4,626 IUPs had obtained “clean-and-clear” status, which indicated that the permits were properly issued and their mining activities were in line with the government’s environmental policies.

Earlier in August, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono instructed the ministry to give broader oversight authority to governors to control the issuance of mining permits by regency heads and mayors.

The country’s poorly managed mining operations have caused not only significant losses to state revenue but also rampant social conflict with local residents.

The government is facing US$2 billion lawsuit filed by British mining company, Churchill Mining, at the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) because of overlapping mining permits in the East Kalimantan district of East Kutai.

One of the notable social conflicts rooted in overlapping mining permits occurred late last year in Bima, Nusa Tenggara.