Franz Wild
RESOURCES Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi has asked to meet Ivanhoe Mines executive chairman Robert Friedland to resolve issues relating to the government’s approval for a $1.6 billion (R17bn) platinum mine.
People living in the Mokopane area in the northern Limpopo province, one of the country’s poorest regions, are lobbying the government to delay the mining licence of Ivanhoe’s local unit, Ivanplats.
They are unhappy because it sold the community a 20 percent stake in the Platreef project to fulfil the state’s demands for black shareholding without all residents being part of the talks over the deal’s terms.
Ivanplats on October 15 started a process that may lead to 325 jobs being cut at Platreef, because it said it did not have any “definite indication” when the right would be executed.
The project is one of three in Africa that makes up Ivanhoe’s assets. It sits alongside Anglo American Platinum’s Mogalakwena, the biggest and most profitable mine of the world’s largest producer of the metal.
The Department of Mineral Resources “has not delayed the issuing of the mining right”, and talks with the company relating to compliance with social, labour and environmental plans continued, it said yesterday.
The department “cannot ignore complaints from the community and is duty-bound [to] listen to the communities and address their concerns.”
The department escalated the matter to Ramatlhodi, who met with an Ivanhoe representative and requested the meeting with Friedland “to find a speedy resolution to this matter. Officials of the department continued to hold meetings with representatives of the firm and communities to find an amicable solution”, it said.
Ivanhoe and Ivanplats “have engaged with the department through direct discussions and the exchange of correspondence, concerning the long awaited, formal activation by the department that is required to give full legal effect to the mining right”, it said yesterday. – Bloomberg