Sandawana Mines, a member of the Kuvimba Mining House group is attracting local businesses as they develop the lithium mine in Mberengwa which has seen over 1200 people being employed within a space of a year.
Speaking to Great Dyke News 24, in Zvishavane recently Kuvimba Mining House Chief Executive Officer Simba Chinyemba said so far Econet Wireless has installed an LTE network in the community.
“We have over 1200 employees right now at Sandawana as we had zero last year, of those 1200 ,80 % are from the community and they are now able to take care of their families.
“ We expect to do more as the mine expands and we are committed to adding clinics, and other infrastructural developments in the community.
“ A very interesting thing is, because of the activities that are now happening at Sandawana, Econet noted it and they recently added LTE to the Sandawana area and it’s because of the work we are doing there.
“We are also grateful to the companies that are answering the call to improve the community we are operating in.
“ Because of Kuvimba’s activity, we will start seeing a lot more , and today you can see our partner Cimas is doing some health checks to the locals, and you will see a lot of corporate stakeholders coming through which is good for the community and their businesses.
“ So when you have an activity, it has a knock on effect on other people who provides services,” he said.
He added that the company has so far spent USD $15 million in developing the community.
“Right now the 1200 people working at the mine do not cook for themselves, they eat local food, cooked by local ladies.
“So the services that go with mining are all going to start to be felt in the community and this is how a lot of towns expanded through mining activities.
“So far there have been a lot of needs in the community and we have immediately gone into it and we have so far spent more than $15 million dollars.
“Once the consultative process has started, we will be able to announce the full plan.
“We are not thinking about today but we are thinking beyond generations like what we always say at Kuvimba,” he added.
According to Chinyemba, Kuvimba Mining House (KMH) is sitting on 820 000 tonnes of lithium stockpiles at Sandawana Mines as the group positions itself to benefit from the globally sought after mineral.
