10 Jun 2019

Lucara Botswana, which operates Karowe Mine, will in addition to constructing a stadium in Letlhakane next year, build a school, the company’s general manager Mr Joe Mchive has revealed.

Updating the area MP, who is also assistant minister in the Ministry of Health and Wellness, Mr Sethomo Lelatisitswe, Mr Mchive said inclusion of the school in the stadium project called for a master plan hence implementation delays. 

“We will surely deliver the stadium as promised and we are not reneging on the promises we made to the people of Letlhakane. The budget is there,” said Mr Mchive. who boasted that 30 per cent of his workforce were women.

The Karowe Mine boss said building a school next to the stadium would be of immense benefit to both learners and the community at large.

The proposed school, he said, was meant to relieve the populated Letlhakane schools while simultaneously catering for mineworkers’ children.

He explained that the school would be constructed in phases, the first being a preschool until ultimately a secondary school was built within the same complex.

Lucara Botswana, which boasts of recovering the biggest diamonds in history from a plant, is also engaged in various corporate social investment programmes around the Boteti area as a way of giving back to the community.

According to Mr Mchive, the company was involved in providing Letlhakane with potable water after the village experienced water shortage explaining that it dispatched a team of engineers to assist Water Utilities Corporation in reticulating water from some three boreholes which had up to then not been operational.

He said Karowe Mine, which had abundant underground water, had a working relationship with Debswana to ensure Letlhakane was supplied with potable water.

The mine supplied Debswana with underground water for use in production while Debswana reticulated potable water to Letlhakane, he said.

Another community project undertaken by Lucara Botswana, Mr Mchive said, was the formulation of a proposal to ensure that Letlhakane Abattoir was not privatised in the normal manner.

He said Lucara Botswana, which had pumped over P10 million into the abattoir to ensure it got to the operational stage, was working on a model that would ensure the community would not feel the pinch of privatisation.

The company would inject a further P4 million into the project for the refurbishment of the abattoir before, in conjunction with the sub-district council, finding a private operator to run. He said if given to a private operator in its current state, the community might have to bear the refurbishment costs.

The abattoir remained council property and Lucara Botswana harbored zero interest in owning the facility, Mr Mchive expalined.

Commenting, Assistant Minister Lelatisitswe suggested that the council establish an entity to run the abattoir on its behalf so that it remained profitable with both Lucara and the council were represented on the board.ENDS