JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – JSE-listed diversified mining company African Rainbow Minerals (Arm) on Thursday announced that it would distribute another R8,9-million in cash to the community for upliftment projects, taking its total in the last three years to R41-million.

Arm said that R7,6-million had been distributed to its broad-based black economic-empowerment trust in 2007 and R24,5-million in 2008.

The three-year-old trust, the company said, had been established as part of its commitment to ensure that "as many of our people as possible participate and benefit from the mining industry".

The company was going ahead with the distribution, "despite the global recession and the challenges facing the mining industry".

The beneficiaries, Arm said, included: five provincial rural upliftment bodies, a women's upliftment trust, a Zionist church trust, the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) and the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu).

Sadtu and Nehawu unions represented 400 000 workers and other beneficiaries included: entrepreneurs, community leaders, women and youth and owners of small and medium-sized enterprises.

The cash distribution would be used to build schools, ablution facilities, crèches, clinics, hospitals and other community upliftment projects.

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