Mozambique: Ruby miner reopens facilities as security improves

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Mozambique: Ruby miner reopens facilities as security improves

7:03 CAT | 11 May 2023

FILE - Aerial view of the Gemrock site in Montepuez district, Cabo Delgado, Mozambique [File photo. Gemrock]

Gemrock has announced the resumption of ruby mining activities in Cabo Delgado, almost seven months after attacks on the company’s facilities, the management said.

“We are very grateful for the support the government has provided to increase security,” said Ian Charles Hannam, founder of Gemrock, as he announced the return to work at a press conference in Pemba on Wednesday.

“We were given defence and security forces to increase security in the area and we, as a company, will also expand that security,” said Ian Hannam, who explained that drones’,canine security and other means, such as electronic will be used.

All security will also cover the villages where the workers live, Hannam said.

“I’ve been here for a week and I think it’s safe for us to reopen,” added Colin John Andrews, director of operations at Gemrock, before returning to London.

After seven months, Ian Hannam said, “there were huge losses” with the company stopped and without revenue “to be able to pay employees” – around 500 -, noting that the main victim was “the local economy”.

However, security is paramount: “Equipment can be replaced, but people’s lives cannot”, he stressed.

“We want to help Mozambique to develop and the people of the region to earn money and be prosperous. All we want the Government to do is give us workspace and security, it’s that simple,” Ian Hannam concluded.

READ: Just in: Gemrock press release on attack at the site of operations in Montepuez – unabridged, with photos

Mozambique: Gemrock calls for government support to resume mining operations – AIM report

Gemrrock is one of the companies that mine rubies and graphite in the southern strip of Cabo Delgado, next to the province of Nampula, and which until 2022 was free of the armed attacks that affected the extreme northeast, in Palma and Mocímboa da Praia, together with the projects of gas.

With military reinforcement in the northeast, violence began to emerge in the south.

Mining companies had several episodes of evacuation of facilities and suspension of activities due to attacks in their spaces or in the vicinity, in 2022, but security has improved and activity has been resumed.

This armed insurgency that Cabo Delgado has been facing for five years has included some attacks claimed by the extremist group Islamic State.

The conflict has already displaced one million people, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and around 4,000 deaths, according to the ACLED conflict registration project.

Source: Lusa