TELL Magazine

The Federal Government has said that it will set up six mines environmental analytical laboratories in each of the geo-political zones of the country for environmental monitoring.
Salim Adegboyega, acting director of Mines, Environmental and Compliance Department, Ministry of Mines and Steel Development, disclosed this to newsmen in Abuja.
He said the plan to set up the laboratories began between 2007 and 2008 when the federal government had a long time plan to achieve vision 20:2020. The acting director stated that the project would cost the government between N150 million and N200 million,  and that the project would start as soon as the fund is made available to the ministry.
Adegboyega said the laboratories would assist the ministry to monitor, supervise and regulate all activities on environmental management in mining sites across the country.
He said that a Mini Environmental Analytical Laboratory had been established at the ministry’s headquarters at the cost of N70 million in 2011.
“The mini laboratory in the ministry is a kind of pilot project to see how we can make use of it to be able to trap our environmental parameter. By the end of the year, we are trying to relocate the laboratory to a better place where we can actually use it,” he said.
The acting director said the scope of the activities of the mini laboratory was not for commercial purposes but for monitoring purposes.
He said the activity of the laboratory was limited to internal use, adding that in 2012 some facilities, such as Atomic Absorption Spectrometer, air quality, the water test kit, GPS to determine the location, were purchased to the tune of about N20 million to beef-up all equipment in the laboratory.