By Estacio Valoi
Persecution, threats of dismissal, and blackmail have become a constant practice by the mining company Gemrock against its workers who have not received their salaries since August this year.
According to employees of the mining company located in the district of Montepuez in the province of Cabo Delgado, they have been appealing to the company’s management to comply with its contract obligations and human rights violation.
“Receiving money is a problem, so the company has been owing workers for three to five months.” Says Belarmino, born in Montepuez, one of the mining company’s employees, aged 28, who doesn’t know how to support his five children, buy food, take care of his wife
Other mining company employees corroborate Belarmino’s statements. “We are Gemrock workers, we even have badges. The company hasn’t paid us for all these months. They treat us badly. The treatment is not equal, first point, it is a problem for us to receive our salaries. We have an average of 250 workers. Since 2017 in the community, since the company has been here in terms of social responsibility, it hasn’t done anything so far, not even a school, the community is complaining a lot, the leaders complain but to no avail.”
The promises made to the community by the mining company Gemrock were so many but so far none of them have been fulfilled, visits from the mining company’s representatives made to the community but only to once again deceive the communities, many of them and or in general remain in their houses built of mud bricks , yard covered in falling bamboo, no school, forced to travel distances to go to the health center
“We don’t even know if it’s Gemrock or Mozgem anymore. In the month of May of this year, 2023, we think it was the owner of the company himself, an Indian man came here with a Dutchman, once again they made promises to build, school, boreholes, roads but so far they have done nothing.” And they complained to the district management, and they were successful. Mark Janco Managing Director of the company Gemrock, when we complained, he told us. ‘The door is open, you can come out as there are many people who want to work.”
They are many workers who are not being paid. The company’s management itself said it has no money. They don’t want to tell us whether the company went bankrupt or not. Most workers are now at home because the company doesn’t have fuel, they say the company went bankrupt.
When we workers demand our wages, we are threatened, beaten, and expelled without prior notice or disciplinary proceedings. Three people were expelled from the kitchen, three people were also expelled from Geology, and their names are Adolfo Severino and Bento Rodrigues, plus a driver, one from armament and one from engineering. When leaving the camp, they took something to feed their families.
A total of nine people were expelled immediately, and without salaries, the people in management also did the same but were not expelled.
Administrator Mark is in Maputo and the company was under the management of Indian human resources. Nothing was built in the communities. There are no schools, hospitals, water holes, roads, nothing! Said the local traditional leader Diamantino Feliano
Another labors told Moz24h that “This company has no responsibility, when a worker suffers an accident at work the company forces them to remain silent, not say that they contracted it at work. We do not have risk subsidies, from production to our food, which is different from that of the senior cafeteria
Breakfast , bread with butter or a little egg, but on the other hand you can find different fruits, a lot of things that I can’t finish talking about.”
Gemrock on the right to replahy letters said that “Last time points, such as school, water pump, road , health post and other things the management will provide you the information accordingly, so by now i’m just informing about last week agreement with company Board Members and employees compromising that they will pay salaries arrears by next week final date 19th December.
It’s difficult to answer you these questions because I have no lebor department notification or Ipaj Notification, but in case you have names share with me will treat them accordingly, based on the insurgency we had some retrenched employees but follow legal procedures. So requesting by your side to hold on publishing until my reply next week.”
Remember that recently Gemrock, a commercial company with headquarters in India. The result was a company called Namanhumbir Limitada, officially registered as Moz Gems Montepuez cheated the local association and took their land with FURA which after a brief period of ownership, they are now landless again
The associations Armando Emiliano Guebuza (AAEG) and 4th October were two out of the three artisanal mining associations which were, according to data from local economic development NGO ADEL, the only ones ever to achieve legal status among eleven associations (totalling 1,378 members) in Cabo Delgado. What happened to the third one could not be ascertained, but both AAEG and 4th October, after a brief period of ruby concession ownership, are now landless again after having been sidelined by mining companies working together with a government-connected entity.
“We were cheated,” say Arnaldo Santos, chairman of AAEG, and his counterpart Afonso Quinhanja, who chairs the 4th October Association. The two had started to assemble close to 350 artisanal miners as members each when it all fell apart. “They made us sign for things we did not understand and we lost the land.”
The formation of the two artisanal mining associations had started in 2018 among a few hundred miners in Namanhumbir. The group had had high hopes to organise all the local miners, and then start taking part in the much-valued formal commercial ruby auctions in the province, the proceeds of which result in hundreds of million US$ per company per year. After the legalisation had been granted by the province, each of the two associations was concessioned a 250 hectars “designated area”, they say. They were then advised to enter into a joint venture with partners who would contribute financing and management expertise. “We partnered with a local company called Kukwira, who had offered to finance our project, and in return we gave them 70% of our shares,” says Santos.
But the financing didn’t come, and neither did equipment or training. In 2021, according to Santos and Quinhanja, Kukwira and others “without consulting the community” sold the concession to Canadian-owned Fura Gems, which had become increasingly active in the area. Since 2018, Fura had taken over concessions previously owned by the Australian Mustang and UK-based Regius ruby mining companies, the latter chaired by former governor and public works minister Felizio Zacarias.
Shares for cash
It is a long-standing practice in Mozambique for ruling party politicians to help allocate licenses to foreign mining companies in exchange for shareholdings and directorships (see “The mining licenses are for the generals”). In the case of ruby giant MRM Gemfields, the London-based company entered Mozambique in a partnership with ruling party member Raimundo Pachinuapa, the son of a liberation war general. Fura also boasts “local partners” but has given no details of the principals in these partnerships.
“If we didn’t sell, we would lose both the money and the land”
As they recall the events of 2021, Santos and Quinhanja narrate that the local mining associations were told by their partners in the joint venture that “the land was small and we should sell our shares to Fura so that the mining could take off.” A cash sales price of US$4,700 was offered, with another community benefit of two tractors, but, say the two chairmen, they were not aware that it meant that there was no longer going to be any joint mining in the community. “They told us that if we didn’t accept we would lose the money as well as the land. We were pressurised. It was just sign, sign, sign.” The two men point to their well-connected local member, mining shareholder and Frelimo war veteran Luis Crisanto Nantimbo, as the one who did most of the pressurising. “He manipulated information to convince us,” says Santos. “He also
The sale to Fura was subsequently registered in the Mozambican Government Gazette which noted that, for the purposes of the registration, both partners in Moz Gems Montepuez, Kukwira as well as the artisanal associations [1], had been represented by a businessman called Chandra Shekhar Singh.
“The truth is that we lost it”
As for Gemrock, the company has distanced itself from the arrangement, saying that “the transactions referred to in your letter are entirely the responsibility of FURA who are best positioned to respond to this letter. We have passed it to them through their management and we hope they will contact you if they have not already done so. We remain open to scrutiny for our activities which are done in a transparent and ethical manner and observing the laws of Mozambique at all times.” (That Gemrock itself did not own any shares in the joint venture, and could therefore not have sold these, is also confirmed by Fura in an initial response, which explains that “as far as we understand, prior to our purchase, Gemrock had a mining operator’s agreement with Namanhumbir, but Gemrock did not own any shares [in the joint venture].”)
Namanhumbir, May 2023
The Ministry does not receive complaints
Asked for its response to the complaints from the artisanal miners ZAM spoke to, the Ministry of Mining and Mineral Resources in Mozambique said that it does “not receive reports of complaints about our performance.” In response to reports that powerful individuals in government and the ruling party have unduly benefited from mining to the detriment of the community, the Ministry only stated that “mining activity in Mozambique is governed by mining legislation and all citizen/investor [activity] operates in accordance with it.”
- Whether the two associations were always correctly referred to in the available documentation is doubtful. The associations themselves say they were both part of the joint venture, while the Government Gazette only mentions AAEG, and Fura in its communications refers to 4th October. (Moz24)
https://www.zammagazine.com/investigations/1679-mozambique-southern-africa-s-mining-scars-part-3