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On-The-Air (16/05/2014)

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16th May 2014

By: Martin Creamer

Creamer Media Editor

  

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Every Friday morning, SAfm’s AMLive’s radio anchor Sakina Kamwendo speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly.  Reported here is this Friday’s At the Coalface transcript:

Kamwendo: The first batch of 4 000 ex-mineworkers have come forward to claim their share of R5-billion worth of unpaid pension and occupational disease benefits.

Creamer: There is still a long way to go, because there is an estimated 200 000 people out there who are owed something like R5-billion in unpaid pension, provident fund and occupational disease benefits. At last they are starting to focus. A call centre has been set-up by Teba in Johannesburg. Teba is a big recruitment agencies of ex-mineworkers.

They are estimating that there are two thirds of mineworkers at the moment are unemployed. So it is a massive big unemployment figure at the moment and they have started with the Eastern Cape. They are focussing on the Eastern Cape because there is such an intense number of people coming from the Eastern Cape into mining.

They are overwhelmed with the response because they have just begun this call centre and coming through already, at last count was 4 000 calls from people who are saying they are ready to receive these funds. Of course, this is a paperwork thing, no big fund is going to give away money without the paperwork coming through.

This is where Teba, which has 15 offices in the Eastern Cape alone, people can walk in, they have 1,5-million people on their database and they can validate and verify and align this paperwork so these people can collect this money. R5-billion out there, it is almost like our social grant a year. A lot of the people that are pushing for this, including the Ford Foundation and the Southern African Trust are saying that this could alleviate poverty.

Kamwendo: As we said the last time people are cash-strapped so this can come in very handy, but also, its worth checking, even if you are not sure, it is worth checking.

Creamer: For some of the people with occupational disease benefits, it can be as high as R500 000, waiting there for collection.

Kamwendo: Two of South Africa’s biggest black-controlled mining companies are investing in West African iron-ore opportunities.

Creamer: West Africa is an iron-ore base second to none. We have the big Pilbara in Australia and it has created so much wealth in Australia. Now there is a potential in West Africa, talking about the Republic of Congo and Gabon. Fortunately some of our black-controlled companies have gone in there early.

One of them is Exxaro, which is headed by Sipho Nkosi, they are well down the line now with developing a mine there and fixing up rail and get the iron-ore out. Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Minerals is now also in getting a share through Assmang of which it owns half, in a small junior company that is listed in London, on the London AIM and they have taken shares in that so that they can start getting a foothold in this area. It is important that there are strong African links and big African hearts need to start working on this.

The really big giants in iron-ore are not in there yet, and we must get in first. So, BHP Billiton is not in there, Rio Tinot is not in there, Vale of Brazil is not in there. It is time for the African contingent to get in there and we see that Exxaro is well in there and now in Gabon the Assmang has moved in half owned by African Rainbow Minerals’ Patrice Motsepe.

Kamwendo South Africa’s first fly farm will open in Cape Town early next year.

Creamer: We are going to have the first fly farm, can you believe it, in the Cape. This is an incredible story because they are going to be on the first farm 8,5-billion flies.

Kamwendo: Why would you need flies?

Creamer:  What they need with these flies is that they feed them on blood and guts, in other words the waste coming out of the abattoir, which is actually an environmental problem. They take that environmental problem away and they feed it to these 8,5-billion flies, who then lay eggs. Then those chicks, as you would say, the fly chicks, the larvae is what they are looking for.

That is protein and the world is short of protein. Instead of farming the seas for fish, which is destroying our seas, you get this larvae in and you feed it to the animals. When you see a chick scratching in the ground with its claws it is going for the insects. It is the same when a trout jumps out of the water it is going for the fly. This is what these wild things feed on and it is much better for us to feed chickens and also our fish on this high-protein larvae that is growing, because it is the natural way.

Kamwendo: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly, he’ll be back with us at the same time next week.

 

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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