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Minerals Report - International Seabed Authority

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One participant recalled that Ms. Zaamwani had mentioned the<br />

problems the Government has with data storage, with the use of proprietary<br />

software by companies and with proprietary software being used outside<br />

Namibia for processing data. This participant also said that Ms. Zaamwani<br />

had spoken about changes in the <strong>Minerals</strong> Act to allow the Government to<br />

deal with this situation. This participant suggested that a possible solution<br />

would be to request that data are presented in pdf format. The same<br />

participant also suggested that with regard to is the stack of data that already<br />

exists, historical data that is less than useful as it stands now, one approach<br />

would be to turn them over to researchers.<br />

In response, Ms. Zaamwani said that the Geological Survey of<br />

Namibia now has a project in place to interpret the data and input it into<br />

software that has wider application than is currently the case. With respect to<br />

the comment attributed to her for a change in the <strong>Minerals</strong> Act to enable<br />

greater flexibility in data submission, Ms. Zaamwani indicated that because of<br />

the close relationship between license holders and Government such<br />

flexibility presently exists. She said that there is a need for a provision to be<br />

included in the legislation to allow various types of solutions to be applied by<br />

the industry.<br />

Mr. Ian Corbett of De Beers Marine made a comment about the<br />

common data format. He said that De Beers Marine had enormous problems<br />

with that concept because the data that are acquired are not normal in many<br />

cases. He also said that De Beers Marine had problems in loading data<br />

particularly scientific data on to systems such as Geoquest or landmark. He<br />

added that what seems common from an oil industry perspective has not been<br />

common when carried across to other types of resources.<br />

Another participant suggested that a possible solution to the problem<br />

of large quantities of data and lack of capacity to interpret these data might be<br />

to increase the periodicity of reporting from quarterly report to yearly, and for<br />

the Ministry to use the mining code as a basis for training staff of the Ministry.<br />

Ms. Zaamwani said that under Namibia’s Affirmative Action Act,<br />

there is new legislation on training that also affects the mining industry. She<br />

said that under the Mining Act, there is no explicit requirement although<br />

INTERNATIONAL SEABED AUTHORITY 784

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