PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Tuesday directed the federal defence secretary, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief secretary and provincial mines and minerals secretary to respond to a plea for details of the mining and mineral exploration leases in the province, including the Muhammadkhel Copper Mining Project in North Waziristan tribal district.

The directive came from a bench consisting of Justice Syed Arshad Ali and Justice Dr Khursheed Iqbal in response to the petition of lawyer Malik Mohammad Ajmal for a comprehensive report about the annual mining revenue, contract awards, and beneficiaries of mineral exploration and mining contracts in the province.

The petitioner also sought information about the share of federal and provincial governments in the revenue generated by these mining leases.

He said that being a resident of the province, he was eager to know about the local natural resources, including oil and gas, chromite, copper, and granite.

Petitioner insists mining agreements deliberately concealed from residents

Mr Ajmal contended that the province was rich in natural resources, which were mostly unexplored and even if those which explored, the income generated by them had not been known to the people, especially the residents of those areas.

He insisted that in order to deprive the people of the respective areas, the agreements of mining and mineral exploration were concealed from them.

“To get all this information, I was left with no option but to approach the high court,” he said.

Malik Ajmal said that the contract for the Muhammadkhel Copper Mining Project was awarded to the Frontier Works Organisation.

He pointed out that in a TV programme about the project, a representative of the FWO declared that it was the second largest cooper site in the country with 3.5 million tons of deposits and that 400 people were working on the project with 70 per cent being locals.

“That FWO official also disclosed that 22000 tons of copper extracted from the Muhammadkhel site in the last three years had been sold to China for $35 million since the start of production in Nov 2019.”

He wondered whether the contract was awarded to the FWO through open bidding or otherwise, and where the income from the project was utilised.

The petitioner said that under Article 158 of the Constitution, the province where a natural gas well-head was located should have priority access to the gas from that well-head, meeting its own needs before its supply to other parts of the country.

He added that the province had several oil and gas fields and it was the rights of the locals to get necessary information about them, including income from them.

The petitioner argued that the right to information was his fundamental right under Article 19-A of the Constitution and it was the duty of the high court to enforce that right and sought the relevant information from authorities.

The respondents in the petition are the federal secretaries of the defence, interior, finance and petroleum ministries, KP government through its chief secretary, provincial secretaries of the home and finance departments, and the FWO through its project director for the Muhammadkhel Copper Mining Project.

Published in Dawn, July 10th, 2024