Enviroment and Community Relations officer of Khoemacau company Hebert Kebafetotse has dismissed reports by some Somelo residents in Ngamiland that the mining company wants to relocate them from the settlement to pave way for copper mining.
“We have no such interests at all. Our proposed mine is 40 kilometres from Somelo and as such there is no reason to relocate them”, he said.
Kebafetotse also said that they treat the residents of Somelo as their neighbours and have even drilled a borehole for them after Water Utilities Corporation had experienced challenges of doing so.
Besides supplying the residents with water, Kebafetotse said that during the peak of the company’s drilling in the area, they had employed 40 people as drillers from the settlement before considering others from outside the settlement. “This in our view was a considerable number considering the population of the settlement,” he said.
He said the mine currently has 15 people in their employment and that the policy is that they should hire residents of the settlement first when there are any vacancies they qualify for.
Some residents of the settlement are alleging that the company wants to relocate them to Kareng village some hundreds of kilometers from Somelo. They allege that they were told this in a kgotla meeting addressed by representatives of the miming company.
