JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The provisional liquidators of Pamodzi Gold have hit back at the delay allegations that labour unions Solidarity and UASA have levelled against them, condemning the allegations as “derogatory, defamatory and factually incorrect”.

Provisional liquidators Enver Motala, Allan Pellow and Deon Botha said, in a joint statement released to the South African Press Agency, that the Standard Bank, on finding Simmer & Jack Mines' (Simmers) R110-million bid for the Orkney gold mine to be “audaciously low”, had not been able to persuade the gold miner to consider raising it.

Simmers had given Standard Bank’s corporate and investment banking division only ten days to deal with what the bank had found to be far below the mine’s valuation and, in the interim, Bele Holdings had made a substantially higher offer, which had had to be considered.

The liquidators said that Simmers had also indicated that some employees would be reengaged at rates of pay lower than those that Pamodzi Gold had agreed.

The “factual” position, the liquidators said, was that the liquidation team had gone out of its way to raise more than R20-million to pay employees, even though they were not obliged to do so at that early stage of the liquidation process.

“We left no stone unturned to ensure that the employees’ salaries were paid,” the aggrieved liquidators said, emphasising that they had been at pains to embark on a “fair and transparent” bidding process in order to give all interested parties an “equal and fair” opportunity to acquire the Pamodzi Gold assets, in a manner that was also in the interest of the creditors.

“Our track record speaks for itself,” they insisted, in retaliation to the charges that the delay was “strongly reminiscent” of Pamodzi’s unrealised Best Rock promises, and that a protraction of the process benefited the liquidators financially.

Solidarity spokesperson Reint Dykema told Mining Weekly Online, however, that Solidarity stood by its expression of dissatisfaction with the manner in which the liquidators were handling the liquidation process.

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