Majwe Mining Joint Venture on Thursday officially opened logistics offices in Jwaneng Township as the Australian-led company eventually established its footprint in the country.
A combination of Leighton Africa, a subsidiary of Australia’s group, Basil Read from South Africa and Bothakga Burrow in Botswana, came together to form Majwe Mining Joint Venture, designated to move swathes of extracted sands and expand the current Jwaneng mine lifespan.
Commenced in May 2011, the five-year multi-national project contracted by Debswana is to move 156 million bank cubic meters from the mine, with Majwe extremely committed to delivering, as expected by the world’s leading diamond producer.
“We are motivated to increase our production as we are mindful of what Jwaneng means to Botswana,” noted the director of Majwe Mining Joint Venture, Ian Speirs, at the occasion.
Jwaneng Mine, the flagship of Debswana, a joint venture of South Africa company De Beers and the government of Botswana, contributes about 60-70 percent of the company’s total revenue with diamonds a key player in the national economy of the country.
With Jwaneng Mine the richest diamond mine in the world by value, the project of Majwe magnitude is expected to leverage the lives of the communities, chief amongst others being employment and business opportunities, developments and a total boost of the local community economy.
Majwe mining is committed to providing such provisions to the Jwaneng community and its impoverished neighbouring villages. So far, the project has employed over 500 people most of whom Batswana from the area.
“We will continue to recruit for skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled labour through advertising, based on the required skills and provide necessary on the job training to our employees,” Speirs said, adding that, so far, “our sister companies, Basil Read Mining and Bothakga Burrow Botswana are involved in national internship programmes”.
Leighton brings a wealth of international experience and world best practices from Australia, Northern and Southern Asia and the whole Middle East.
It is one of the world’s largest project development and contracting groups.
While Basil Read Mining is one of South Africa’s leading specialist contract mining service providers, Bothakga Burrow Botswana, on the other hand, is a diversified multi-disciplinary engineering, mining and contracting company.
Founded in 1972 in Botswana and based in Gaborone, BBB is 100 percent Botswana-citizen owned, priding itself in merging internationally recognized best practices with local Botswana expertise and knowledge to bring value and add to its products and services.
Basil Read operates on various sites around the country and has experience in gold, platinum, chrome, uranium, iron ore and diamond mining.
Member of Parliament Bagalatia Arone delivered a message on behalf of the area MP, Mephato Reatile.
Reatile commended Bothakga Burrow Botswana for the venture, saying the local company will learn a lot from its partners about many aspects of mining.
He urged other companies interested in doing business in the country, either in mining or in other sectors of the economy, to follow suit as “this has a very significant impact in the development and growth of our workforce in skills transfer and the economy at large”.
