DRC natural resources press review of Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Citing Rutshuru civil society, the Forum des As newspaper announces that the M23 is to sabotage the hydroelectric Rutshuru. It feeds agglomerations Rutshuru and Kiwanja center who are now plunged into darkness. All main economic activity is stopped. Such as telecommunications that no longer meet. M23 rebels interrupted the supply of electrical energy by cutting the power cables.

On another folder recurring latter time in Katanga, Radio Okapi reports that devastating elephants killed eight people last week in the towns of Mangi and Kipamba in Malemba Nkulu (Katanga). Felix Mbayo, the provincial director of the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation (ICCN), says that more than one hundred and fifty elephants roam around a tributary of the Lualaba River. In addition to attacking humans, they ravaged stretches of fields.

The same radio also announces that the mining police arrested on Sunday 25 August at Kolwezi in Katanga, a woman accused of stealing nearly 10 tons of minerals. Police sources indicate that these minerals were stolen from the concession company Tenke Fungurume Mining. But they do not specify whether the accused acted in collusion with others. According to the same sources, the woman was arrested when she acheminait hundred and forty three (143) bags malachite Kolwezi. She had to get up to the Kinsanfu town, located 70 kilometers from Kolwezi.

Always in Katanga, the UN radio informs about two thousand children working in the informal artisanal mining Kambove said Monday, August 26 the head of the mines of this city, about 25 km from Likasi, Katanga . According to local official mines, most of these children do not study. For its part, the NGO World Vision states that the age of more than half of these children between 9 and 17 years. According to a report released last weekend by the NGO, the children are mostly sick.Remain in the province of Katanga, where the Observer newspaper reported that the company Kamoto Copper Company, a company composed of Foil, Glencore and Gécamines Group, is investing $ 2.4 billion in U.S. copper mining and cobalt. The newspaper points out that with this investment and mining Kamoto Mutanda will be operational for sure for 25 years yet.

Radio Okapi also reports that banana has been ravaged by bacterial wiltz in several areas of South Kivu. According to the organization of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the disease is part of Masisi, North Kivu neighbor, before reaching the South Kivu and continue its spread to northern Katanga. Farmers say they are powerless against this plague that decimated the banana, a staple food of the province. Bacterial wiltz causes yellowing and dieback of banana leaves and early ripening of the fruit. It destroyed several hectares of banana plantations, or thousands of tons of bananas.

Radio Okapi reports that five hundred and fifty to six cows belonging to farmers expelled from Rwanda and Tanzania in search of pasture in the DRC have been blocked for two days at the border with Burundi Kiliba (South Kivu). Their owners, illegally entered the Congolese territory, were sent on Burundian territory. They had entered the DRC via Burundi after their expulsion from Tanzania. But the Burundian border services refuse to accept animals.