Norman Mbazima
Photo by: Duane Daws
Kumba Iron Ore top brass and Mineral Resources Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi last week launched a new R8.8-million clinic and visited the Anglo American company’s award-winning 718-employee housing complex in the Northern Cape.
“We believe that these projects will go a long way in addressing the developmental and social challenges faced by the country and that it is only through partnership that we can make a bigger impact,” Kumba CEO Norman Mbazima commented in a media release sent to Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly.
The new Postmasburg district clinic, built by a local black economic-empowerment joint venture, created 92 jobs during the construction phase and is the result of a partnership between Kumba, the Northern Cape Department of Health and the Tsantsabane municipality.
JSE-listed Kumba provided the funding, medical equipment and project management, the health department is seeing to the clinic’s staffing and day-to-day operation and the municipality has provided the bulk services.
The housing project, which created employment for 3 000 semiskilled and skilled personnel, is a 2013 winner of both the provincial and national Department of Human Settlements’ Govan Mbeki awards.
The houses were built as part of an integrated approach that allows the houses to form part of the current community without creating a separate mining settlement, and the clinic forms part of broader infrastructure around Kumba’s new Kolomela iron-ore mine.
Kumba’s social and community strategy is aimed at supporting government in addressing the gaps in education and skills, health and social welfare, and youth, enterprise and infrastructure development.
Bricklayers for the ventures were trained at the Kolomela community skills training centre.