Sinazongwe District Commissioner (DC) Oliver Pelete has said the sale of the Maamba Collieries Limited (MCL) to NAVA Bharat has cheered Sinazongwe residents and the miners.
Mr. Pelete said the sale of the coal mine has come at the right time when government had made several attempts to find an equity partner to buy the company.
He said it was difficult to for government to finds a suitable equity partner because of the mine’s liabilities.
He said the MCL’s operations were grounded to a halt when Oriental Quarry the company contracted to mine coal on behalf of the mine decided to pull out as a result of the company’s failure to pay the contractor for the supply of unprocessed coal.
“This action brought a lot of anxiety among the miners and thought that the mine will be shut down and the action by management to send the workers on recess for more than one month created further anxiety,” Mr. Pelete noted.
The DC noted that Finance and National Planning Minister Dr. Situmbeko Musokotwane’s announcement that MCL has finally been sold has excited the miners especially that their welfare would be taken into consideration in the sales agreement.
Mr. Pelete noted that the community that has been dependent on the mine for their survival hopes that the economy of Sinazongwe District would be put back on track once the equity partner starts operating as planned in March 2010.
He said the setting of up a thermal plant to generate electricity using coal would create employment among the community.
Mr. Pelete noted that the investor intends to produce 300 mega watts of electricity once the thermal plant was completed.
Mine has been experiencing operational problems for a decade now, owing to the dilapidated equipment and management problems.
ZANIS
I only hope these are solid deals that will benefit the local communities.
The part on the Production of the 300 mega watts is welcome news. Okay Ma bloggers why do we always comment the negative investors, it’s about time we started calling for assistance for our own local investors. Like stated before 85 % of the US work force is employed by small businesses. By local capital, how is this difficult for our RB’s to understand with his people. Veteran you live in the US and you don’t see this?
We really seem to have a big problem in Zambia, such that nobody knows how it should be fixed. Is it because of lack of leadership skills,management skills, decision making and problem solving skills by these managers who run these companies or its because of influencial decisions made by our own failed and disgraced politicians? or may be its because of donor and investor dependance causing to sell every indignious zambian company? Mines have been sold,Zanaco 50% has been sold, chilanga cement, Zambia sugar, zambia railways, Zambian textile, now its maamba coal mine and zamtel is in the pipe line to be sold, Zesco and nitrogen chemicals of zambia are also about to go. What else? the all country will be sold by 2030.
This news can only cause excitement to short-term thinkers. Those that think beyond and look deeper know very well that yet another giant piece of our national wealth has just been sold down the river. It is quite a sad situation because being a poor nation we are really forced to choose between disease and injury.
We Zambians may not yet have the financial means to fully invest in and manage our own mines but we expect our government to at least set more protective guidelines when foreign investment threatens to usurp the very last foundation of our economic existence.
Just look at how quickly the western governments moved to partially nationalize their countries’ banks and other companies in order to prevent a total meltdown from the global financial crisis.
I think it is in China where it is said that the journey of a thousand miles starts with but a single step. I say that before we as Zambians take a single step, we first need to decide the direction we want to travel. So in our case, The journey of a thousand miles starts with a decision.
And our decision in this situation must surely be to preserve our natural resources and not sell out all the copper we have left. Or at the very least to find some sort of option that will see us through the next couple of decades without our most valuable resource (Diversification). This calls for decisive action by ALL our political leaders. I challenge you to work tirelessly hard in 2010 by searching out ideas and finding the best plans for our mines in the future. Zambia’s future is in your hands…
People in this area have suffered long enough. The miners in particular. But auctioning our national wealth is not the solution to bring prosperity to the country. The future generation will judge us and hate the actions of this Rupia Banda. And by the this blogers so called veteran and patriot are *****s on a government payroll sitting at the Zambian embassy in Washington DC blogging useless propagada insulting the intellegence of Zambia. I urge them not to bite the finger that feeds them and also remind the that they will be kicked out soon and hopefully by the time they leave ZNBC will be sold to a Chinese company