After a devastating human toll of 11 dead and several ill due to continued air and river pollution, the village of Kabombwa has definitively disappeared from the map. More than 1,000 residents have found housing elsewhere in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) province of Lualaba, including in the neighboring mining town of Fungurume.

Kabombwa’s tranquility had begun fading away in 2020 when lime production began at a nearby plant operated by the Chinese company Tenke Fungurume Mining SA (TFM). According to an official from Fungurume town hall, after over a year of discussions about financial compensation, the inhabitants of Kabombwa received between $3,000 and $5,000 from the government when they were relocated. But for the village’s inhabitants, the amount is far from sufficient. It isn’t enough to buy a house or build a new one in their new villages.

One reason for the insufficient compensation is the provincial government’s administrative process, civil society organizations tell Mongabay.

More precisely due to the Relocation Commission (Commission de délocalisations), a body created by the provincial government of Lualaba to oversee evictions and relocation. This commission ends up taking a percentage of the total funds owed to relocated people. Mining companies, on their end, rarely get involved in the dispute after paying the sum, leaving the government to manage compensating those affected.

Unfair compensation has become a pattern in mining relocations in Lualaba, a province with large deposits of copper and cobalt, two essential minerals for phones, computers and renewable energy technologies. The rush for these precious minerals has caused local residents to fear not only relocation itself but also relocation under unfair circumstances.

How is compensation received? First, the Relocation Commission conducts an appraisal to determine the value of relocated people’s property. The commission is made up of government officials, deputies, members of civil society, and land technicians. After the appraisal, the mining company makes its payments...

The Relocation Commission, however, receives 10% of the total cost of payments to be made to relocated people, sources explain...this percentage is to fund its operations and its members’ remuneration.

Ten percent of the total amount to be distributed is therefore missing when it reaches beneficiaries. When communities speak of unfair compensation in circumstances such as these, the private companies take no responsibility. Yet they paid 10% of the total amount due to the commission’s technicians, complain civil society organizations.

This means that those who are being relocated are the ones financing the expertise leading to their relocation, Kalenga says.

According to both the Mining Code as well as the Mining Regulations (Annex 18), the holder of the mining rights, thus the mining company, is the party responsible for relocating people exposed to the mining’s harmful effects. This would suggest that the mining company therefore assumes the total cost, including an extra 10% commission, and not the beneficiaries.

For example, in Tshabula, a village near the city of Musonoïe in Kolwezi, and Kakanda, a village near Fungurume, farmers are waiting to be resettled by the mining companies COMMUS [Joint venture between Zijin Mining and Gécamines] and Boss Mining, a subsidiary of Eurasian Natural Resources PLC. Despite the state’s investment in the process, dissatisfaction prevails. Each relocation sees the demand for more funds for property that people say is undervalued, such as houses and fruit trees.

However, according to Christophe Kabwik, an activist who has long defended the inhabitants of Kalukuluku, a village near the Ruashi Mine east of the city of Lubumbashi, mining companies don’t like to organize resettlement for people who have to leave their mining sites. Kabwik believes the reason to be that mining companies prefer to pay less by giving cash rather than building new houses. In 2006, with assistance from the city’s deputy mayor, Ruashi Mining rejected the option of resettling some 200 people who had requested relocation...