Mozambique: Ruby mining company teaches professions to communities after violent past

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Mozambique: Ruby mining company teaches professions to communities after violent past

5:11 CAT | 26 Nov 2019

in file CoM

A ruby mining company in northern Mozambique which has paid the local population compensation for a violent past is to teach 2,100 people new skills over the next seven years.

“We are investing in education because of the lack of infrastructure in the region,” Emílio Jamine, manager of Montepuez Ruby Mining (MRM), a majority-owned subsidiary of Britain’s Gemfields, said.

On Monday, the firm opened a vocational training centre in Montepuez, Cabo Delgado province. Budgeted at US$1.4 million, the centre has two classrooms, several workshops and support facilities, and will teach clothes-making, house building and various engineering skills in 12 three-month courses.

Twenty-six-year-old João Admo told Lusa that he hoped to become an electrician, a far cry from his usual daily tasks in Ntoro, a village located within the mining concession area.

“I don’t have a proper profession; I plant vegetables to support my wife and two children,” he says when asked to explain what motivated him to apply for the course.

In another workshop, Angelina João Paulo, 38, is preparing materials for the start of classes which she hopes will “be able to help her family.”

The company hopes the training courses will open up new opportunities and lure people away from illegal ruby extraction, which has cost dozens of lives among the communities in the past and been the occasion for extreme violence.

In January, Gemfields agreed to pay an out-of-court settlement of US$8.3 million (€7.5 million) to settle 273 claims of deaths, beatings and other human rights violations carried out by private security and police personnel at the mine between 2011 and 2018.

The firm admitted the accidents, but never the responsibility for them.

“Our relationship with communities has improved a lot in recent times. We have been making people aware of the importance of legal activity,” Emílio Jamine said, highlighting recent actions in favour of the population.

During a visit to the mine for journalists, the company noted that it has invested US$3 million (€2.7 million) in social responsibility projects since 2014, including two mobile clinics and the construction of four primary schools.

In addition to these initiatives, a resettlement village for 105 families from the Ntoro community is under construction in the region. The project has so far cost the company US$7 million, and it has set a budget of US$9.5 million to cover the entire resettlement process.

“MRM has always favoured an interactive resettlement process. Families have been following the process since the first day of construction,” MRM engineer Jonathan Simango told Lusa.

Created in 2012, MRM is 75% owned by Gemfields and 25% owned by Mozambican Mwiriti Limitada, which is in turn controlled by Raimundo Pachinuapa, a veteran general of the Mozambican Liberation Front (Frelimo), the ruling party since independence.

The company began extracting rubies in 2014, and earned revenues of US$512 million (€464.2 million) from 12 gemstone auctions since then.

Source: Lusa