Mwadui mines undertake 53m/- projects in Kishapu
 
2005-01-29 08:13:02
By Anniceth Nyahore, PST, Kishapu
 

Williamson Diamonds Limited last year rehabilitated six secondary schools in Kishapu District, Shinyanga Region at a cost of 53,317,300/- .

The mining company donated bricks for Mipa Secondary School, iron sheets and cement for Mwamalasa and Kishapu secondary schools construction projects.

Other forms of assistance included the rehabilitation of Mwadui Technical Secondary School, Mwadui Lutheran and Shinyanga (Shy-Bush), which also received a donation of seven computers each.

Kishapu District Commissioner Edward Maleyek said recently that the company has also donated furniture, and connected electricity and water supply to the schools.

He said apart from the assistance to the secondary schools’ projects, the company had also spent 75 m/- on running costs of primary schools in the mines.

The DC also said the company has contributed to the development of other sectors in the district apart from the education sector.

For instance, it spent 359.9 m/- on the improvement of services at Mwadui hospital, Shinyanga regional hospital and the rehabilitation of Buganika dispensary.

Other donations include 70m/- as famine relief for residents of surrounding villages and two computers for Mwadui Police Station.

The DC commended the mining company and called on other companies to emulate Williamson Diamonds Ltd example.

Tuesday,July 13,2004

Mwadui stung by House committee report

By Muganyizi Mutta

The Williamson Diamonds Limited (WDL), which mines diamonds at Mwadui in Shinyanga Region, has reacted to the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament (PAC)’s report that has been tabled and may be viewed on the Bunge website.

The WDL complaints refer to PAC’s visit to Mwadui in January this year, whereby the committee subsequently submitted a report to the Speaker.

“The Public Accounts Committee’s Report contains many inaccuracies that portray a completely false picture. Some comments are damaging to WDL reputation”, reads the press statement issued at the press conference convened by its managing director, Mr. Tony Guthrie, in Dar es Salaam yesterday.

In addition to the inaccuracies, the statement reads, the partisan nature of the report gives rise to the questions as to why the PAC chose to report “in this manner.”

“After a report has been submitted, the presumption is that the work of PAC is complete. However, they continue with hostile and leading investigations that appear to be intended to serve self interest and not Parliament”, it states.

The company is also interested to know that the PAC chairman, Mr. Hamad Rashid Mohammed, has denied that any report has been submitted, “something that is not of truth.”

The statement says it is only parliamentary privilege that protects PAC members from a libel suit.

The company has declared to challenge the minister for energy and mineral resources, the attorney general and El-Hilal Minerals Ltd over the issuing of mining licences in the former WDL protection area under alleged fraudulent circumstances.

“These matters and many others relating to this are currently before the courts. Therefore, the PAC is in breach of the Standing Parliamentary Orders, which forbid any discussion in parliament of matters before the courts” said Mr. Guthrie, the WDL managing director at the Royal Palm Hotel yesterday.

WDL observes that, at the moment, the situation is made worse by the fact that the government’s decision to divest the company of large areas of land, which was up till now with the company’s protected zone has created an air of serious insecurity, it stated.

“WDL’s security of tenure in Tanzania has been undermined by the insurance of prospecting and thereafter mining licences to El-Hilal Minerals Limited (EHM) by the minister for energy and natural resources, over an area that forms a diamond area and diamond protected area,” it said.

BCSTimes.com>>Daily Times

A JOINT REPORT
THE EASTAFRICAN

MWADUI, TANZANIA'S most productive diamond mine, located in Shinyanga region in the Lake Victoria zone, faces imminent closure unless the government acts to reduce the high costs of mining.

Mwadui is one of the biggest diamond mines in the world, but produces low grade diamonds for lack of appropriate mining equipment, which cannot be bought at the moment because of its high cost.

The company's majority shareholder, De Beers of South Africa, says the cost of mining had risen, making it impossible to sustain the operation of the mine. The company projects that the grades mined at Mwadui will drop from the current nine carats per hundred tonnes of dump material to six carats by next year, owing to inefficiency at the current production plant.

 The 60-year-old Mwadui mine is operated by a De Beers subsidiary, Williamson Diamonds Ltd (WDL), which has a 75 per cent stake in the mine, while the Tanzania government owns the remaining 25 per cent.

 The mine's production manager, Mr Johanny Velloza, told The EastAfrican recently that to overcome the problem, WDL needs $1.5 million to purchase a new machine with the capacity to process 600 tonnes of dump ground per hour.

 Mr Velloza blamed the high production cost on high electricity tariffs that account for up to 19 per cent of total expenses. He said that for the mine to be profitable, these charges should drop to nine or eight per cent, as is the case in other countries.

 The firm says that, until the September 11 New York and Washington DC terrorist attacks, the diamond market was predictable. But the situation has changed, thus the need to reduce the royalties to cope with fluctuations in demand for the gemstone.

 Seventy-five per cent of the world's diamonds sales are through the New York market, with half the sales by Arab countries. The firm pays mandatory royalties to a London-based Tanzanian sorting firm, Tansort, at $4.5 per carat.

 Between 1994 and 2000, the firm paid $4.05 million to Tansort for sorting 901,300 carats. Production (in carats) for seven years was: 1999 (20,800), 1995 (35,000), 1996 (121,500), 1997 (121,000), 1998 (87,500), 1999 (196,5000) and 2000 (319,000).

 However, it was difficult to establish how much money has been paid to Tansort since the early 1940s, when Williamson Diamond Mine at Mwadui started operations. The acting principal secretary, Mr B. Mrindoko, and the ministry's acting commissioner of minerals, Mr G. Nyelo, said Tansort was a government department, but declined to give details.

 Government sources said that few people, if any, had access to Tansort's books.

 "It is even difficult to establish why WDL is paying money directly to a government department in London instead of transferring it through the Treasury," the source said.

 A director, a Tanzanian national, appointed to Tansort in the early 1960s still runs the outfit to this day. He was supposed to have retired many years ago, but since few people are aware of his existence, he has stayed on.

 During a recent visit to Mwadui, the deputy minister in the Ministry of Minerals and Energy, Dr Ibrahim Msabaha, ackowledged the problems the government was facing in collecting the money. He said that the government had begun working on ways of ensuring that the money reached the Treasury.

 "We appreciate Dr Msabaha's visit and his promise, but discussions over the problems have taken over two years without any concrete action from the government," a WDL director, Mr Mark Stanley, said.

 Mr Nyelo confirmed that his ministry had been informed of the WDL problems.

 "The government is informed of their problems; we are working on them," he said. He said WDL would have to inform the government in advance of the decision to close the mine.

 On the issue of high electricity tariffs, Mr Nyelo said it was not possible to reach a decision overnight. In the past two months, WDL lost $500,000. It was expected to pay $15 million in loans at the end of this year, he said. 

According to Mr Stanley, there were at least five options if Mwadui were to survive. These are: a recovery in the world diamond market; buying a new crusher; increasing the capacity of the plant; looking for new alluvial gravel; and procuring an IPJ (inland pressure jig).

Mwadui diamonds 'drying up'
By Express Team

DIAMOND mining at Mwadui in Shinyanga region is at the verge of collapsing, industry authorities have warned.
The Mwadui diamond mine, which has sourced great wealth to the Tanzanian economy for over 50 years, can no longer withstand high electricity tariffs and a chain of taxes levied on the project by both the central and local governments. 
These costs have over the year seen the project, now a joint venture between the government and the Williamson Diamond Limited (WDL), consistently drop diamond production volume.
According to the Tanzania Chamber of Mines (TCM), the 
Williamson Diamonds (WDL) concession is an old mine that requires preferential treatment to continue operating viably. 
John Acland, WDL’s Managing Director, said in a written interview with The Express unless the government takes swift measures to lower electric costs and high taxes, the project could soon close down business.
Acland said already WDL had forwarded a list of “urgent recommendations” needed to be effected by the government immediately if Mwadui mine should continue to exist.
They include a call to lower electricity tariffs to US eight cents per unit power- a rate similar to those of neighbouring countries Kenya and Uganda. Tanzania Electric Supply Company (TANESCO) currently charges about twice the rate. 
Another proposals is that of lowering diamonds royalty fee from five per cent to three per cent as enjoyed by other miners countrywide. 
The government is also required to reduce the diamonds sorting fee from the current USD 4.5 (TShs 3,600) per carat to the internationally accepted charge of USD 1.0-1.5. (TShs 800 - 1,200). 
Before its nationalization in 1970, Mwadui mine was one of the most productive mines in the world with a production of 150,000 carats a year. 
State mismanagement upon nationalization however, witnessed a consistent nosedive in the production to an output of below 20,000 carats by 1994. 
WDL concession has over the years reversed the trend and by last year the mine was projected to produce of 2.3 million tonnes of raw material compared to less than two million in 1999.
Mwadui mine, the sole diamond-producing outfit in the country yielded some 95,300 carats in 1998, equivalent to a 30 per cent shortfall compared to the preceding year. The mine had produced 100,000 carats in 1996, an output four times higher than the 1993 production.
The closure of business by Mwadui diamond mine, whose 75 per cent shares are in the hands of WDL and 25 per cent controlled the state, would imply a loss of jobs to 480 employees and a lost site to 450 contractors.
It would also mean a serious reduction in the country’s foreign exchange earning. Diamond export in the year ending July 2000 brought in USD 42.6 million equivalent to a four-times increase from USD 7.6 million earned the previous year.
The July 2,000 diamond export earning constitutes around eight per cent of the total forex earnings in 1999 but about four times less than the value of cashew nut exports, which alone fetched USD 120 million in the year. 
Tanzania is greatly hailed for modernizing its mining code, which has attracted more than 200 mineral explorers since 1997. The investor turn-up has seen some USD 1.5 billion pumped into the mining sector since 1995, an amount expected to swell further as new projects come on stream

Old women victims of superstition

Fear of witches, mining boom blamed in increasing attacks on elderly

08/13/99

By Rodrique Ngowi / Associated Press

SHINYANGA, Tanzania - Greed and fear of witches are proving a deadly combination on the wind-swept plains of northwestern Tanzania, and old women with red-rimmed eyes are paying the price.

Stories abound in Shinyanga of children, grandchildren and neighbors orchestrating the killing of elderly women whose eyes have grown red from years of cooking over cow dung fires. Medicine men and diviners say the women are witches responsible for misfortunes of friends and relatives.

"A group of two or three hooded individuals, dressed in black, bearing bright torchlights and razor-sharp machetes, converge at the house of potential victim, break open the door and order relatives to identify a woman they seek," Shinyanga Police Chief Wolfgang Gumbu said.

"A lightning-fast machete strike on top of the head, followed by another on the hand attempting to cover the face and a final blow on the shoulder. They harm no one else and take nothing except, of course, the life of the hapless woman."

The Sukuma people of the Shinyanga region south of Lake Victoria have always believed in witchcraft, though its practice was repressed by German and then British colonial rulers. When this poor East African nation became independent in 1961, witchcraft again came to the fore.

But scholars say economics may be the real force in the growing number of attacks on old women, who are traditionally singled out in societies that believe in witchcraft. They point to the recent boom in mining for gold, diamonds and semiprecious stones in Shinyanga and the creation of a market economy after a failed 25-year experiment in socialism.

"People desperate for wealth will do almost anything," Halima Mayunga, a medicine woman, said of miners and others who turn to sacrifices to bring good fortune to their efforts to strike it rich.

"Sacrifices range from grain and cattle to the ultimate sacrifice of all - a human life," she said.

More than 90 percent of Shinyanga's 2.5 million people believe in the powers of witchcraft and have resisted conversion to either Christianity or Islam, said the Rev. Michael Lyimo, a pastor in Tanzania's Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Simeon Mesaki, a sociologist at the University of Dar es Salaam who has studied witchcraft in Shinyanga, calls it "a potent living reality for the people, rather than an abstract idea."

Northeast of Shinyanga town near De Beers' Mwadui diamond mine, residents dig up their own plots of land in search of the precious stones and put their faith in witchcraft.

"Most of us consult medicine men in every phase of our mining activities," said Seba Ndekelo, a miner and diamond dealer.

Last year police arrested a medicine man as he prepared a charm to protect four miners accused of killing a taxi driver. The miners allegedly performed the ritual killing in hopes of striking it rich at a mine and gave the medicine man a car as payment.

Not all such killings stem from ancient beliefs, some people say. With every plot of land considered a potential source of riches, some old women are being killed more for reasons of greed than superstition, they say.

The women are "simply victims of attempts by their next-of-kin to get them out of the way and inherit their property," businessman Richard Shirima said.

Mr. Mesaki, the sociologist, said the relocation of peasant farmers into socialist-inspired "ujamaa" villages in the 1970s seriously disrupted traditional life. The system of local chiefs who dealt with community problems was scrapped in favor of distant bureaucrats.

The new system made it very difficult for the people of Shinyanga to settle conflicts satisfactorily. Although the "ujamaa" philosophy has been abandoned, village residents remain frustrated over how to solve disagreements resulting from the shortage of land, reduced soil fertility, divorce, inheritance and infant mortality.

Residents say many women accused of practicing witchcraft have fled their villages, leaving families and property behind. The problem has become so serious that women in rural Shinyanga are "becoming an endangered species," said the Tanzania Media Women's Association, an influential advocacy group.

Police, who recorded 50 witchcraft-related murders in Shinyanga last year, say it is virtually impossible to investigate such cases.

"Relatives, friends and neighbors of the victim close ranks and put up a wall of silence to investigators," said Mr. Gumbu, the police chief. "Often, they are relieved that a problem, in the form of the victim, has been eliminated."