Kayelekera plunder is govt blunder—CfSC
The Lilongwe-based Center for Social Concern (CfSC) has accused government over the way it handled Malawi’s biggest mining venture, Kayelekera Uranium Mine (KM) in Karonga, which closed recently due to tumbling uranium prices on the global market.
In its latest Basic Needs Basket (BNB) commentary titled ‘The Kayelekera natural resource plunder is government blunder,’ CfSC also says from the outset they always had doubts regarding how the entire mining investment was handled by government.
The faith-based institution said because of the doubts, they initiated two projects in Karonga whose hallmark was to foster a critical mass of activists and community members that will ably engage government on extractives with the view of influencing government to sign onto the Extractives Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) and also to monitor the cost of living and people’s access to the basic needs.
In the commentary, CfSC social conditions research programmes officer Alex Nkosi explained that the advent of KM owned by Paladin Energy Limited’s subsidiary company, promised a new era of hope, opportunity and development not only for the Karonga community, but also for Malawi as a whole.
“The mantra that government sung at the time was that the mining venture will create jobs for many, improve small-scale businesses, transform lives in Karonga through corporate social responsibility projects and, consequently, modernise Karonga town with growth of industries.
“It is thus shocking that a couple of years down the line, Kayelekera mine has been deemed as a loss-making entity that merits its suspension,” he said.
Nkosi said the CfSC BNB research project has revealed that the opening of the mine had, to a great extent, fostered a tremendous increase in the cost of living in Karonga, forcing most of the people in the district struggle to meet their basic needs.
He said housing rentals, which were relatively affordable before the mine opened soared drastically as the ‘better-paid’ Kayelekera employees competed for housing with local residents.
“Prices for food items like fish and rice, which are central to the Karonga food basket, are now also out of reach for most people in Karonga. The CfSC believes that the government could have put mechanisms in place to control the cost of living so that poor people in Karonga are protected from the likely shocks that this investment was anticipated to cause,” he said.
For instance, Nkosi said that in negotiating the mining contract, government could have demanded that Paladin constructs adequate housing for its employees to arrest the demand for housing.
He said on CSR, they feel there is nothing tangible that the community of Kayelekera and Karonga as a whole have benefitted from the mining venture, saying the water plant which Paladin installed at Karonga Boma has not provided water to people who are in need.
“People of Keyelekera are still drinking water from Rukuru and Sele rivers. The people at Karonga Boma who use the water from the plant still experience water shortages, drastic at times,” said Nkosi.
He is also worried that the health facility that government and Paladin promised to construct for the people of Kayelekera has never seen the light of the day, “even as the mine stands on the verge of a shut-down.”
CfSC believes that if properly harnessed, the resource discoveries now happening in Malawi are the biggest opportunity for Malawi to grow its economy.
