17 Feb 2022

The minister of Health and Wellness, Dr Edwin Dikoloti has appreciated Debswana Jwaneng mine for empowering citizen-owned companies.

Speaking at the mine’s management briefing prior to the launch of an Oxygen plant and E-pharmacy in Jwaneng on Wednesday, Dr Dikoloti said such efforts would also go a long way in creating the much needed employment opportunities, especially for the youth.

“One of the top concerns for government is lack of employment among the youth, and I am happy to note that your move to empower citizens will contribute significantly to improving this,” he said.

Dr Dikoloti also appreciated the mine’s corporate social responsibility projects in villages in its environs, expressing the need  for health strategies specific to the elderly as they were prone to ailments.

The minister appreciated the mine’s efforts after the general manager, Mr Koolatotse Koolatotse informed him that the mine had high confidence in the ability of Batswana to mine.

“We are one of the first countries to start mining diamonds, and so we have no reason to import expertise.

In fact, other countries should be coming to benchmark and use our expertise because we are the most experienced country,” he said.

Mr Koolatotse said such high regard for Batswana’s ability had led Jwaneng mine to terminate some of the foreign companies contracts in favour of wholly citizen-owned ones.

“We have engaged wholly citizen-owned companies in areas such as drilling, tyre management, mining equipment leasing, crushed rock and security, among others,” he said.

He said in areas where they had not parted ways with foreign companies, they ensured that those companies partnered with the locals.

Mr Koolatotse indicated that most foreign companies that the mine had engaged were using local experts, which beat the logic of engaging them over locals.

He further informed the minister that since the mine terminated the Majwe Mining company contract to do the Cut 9 project in-house, the performance had improved by 28 per cent and in the process, saving the mine about P370 million this year.

“This makes one wonder why we had to send billions of pula to a foreign country, which used almost 100 per cent local expertise,” he said.

Mr Koolatotse also assured the minister that the next move after empowering citizen-owned companies and citizens, would be ensuring that machinery parts were manufactured locally.

“At the moment most parts are sourced from South Africa. We want to correct that because this will also create more employment opportunities in the country,” he said.

On other issues, Mr Koolatotse informed the minister that the company was making all efforts to keep it’s products as ‘clean’ as possible by ensuring high safety at the workplace, fighting corruption as well as ensuring effective corporate social responsibility.

“We are aware that government depends heavily on our diamonds so we need to be thorough in ensuring that they are as clean as possible,” he said. ENDS