Karowe Diamond Mine is currently in the process of building a multi-purpose sports facility in Boteti Sub District. The state of the art project is expected to help grow sports in the region and empower the people of Boteti. This facility will host among others sporting competitions, cultural events and meetings. It will also have sports grounds to cater for football, softball, volley ball, netball and basketball.
The project is part of Karowe Diamond Mine’s Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives.
The General Manager of Karowe Diamond Mine, Johane Mchive told The Telegraph in an interview on Friday that they felt the need to undertake such as a project as Boteti does not have access to sporting facilities or community centre. “The nearest facilities are in Francistown 240 km, Serowe 200km and Maun 380 km,” he said.
Mchive said the project is being designed and it will be built in a staged manner to scale the project based on business conditions and community needs. He said the facility will be owned by council and operated by the private sector. He further said the project was initially conceived in 2019 and the idea was to build a community hall. He said there were requests for other facilities like resource centre, fitness centre and sports grounds which were raised by community members during Kgotla meetings and they heeded the call.
“This then prompted the idea of developing a one stop centre that will cover as many facilities as possible. Tenders have already been evaluated and construction is scheduled to commence in January 2019,” he said.
On how much the project is worth, he said the true worth or detailed estimates will only be determined by the end of the year when detailed designs would have been completed.
He also revealed that one of the important facilities that will be incorporated into this project is the community library which will help empower the residents with education. Initially he said the project was to be constructed alone but he said they realized it was going to be a duplicate and a waste of resources. He said some of the proceeds of the mine’s General Manager’s Annual Cycling Challenge will go towards this project.
Formerly known as AK6 Project, Karowe Diamond Mine is owned by Lucara Diamond Company, a Canadian company through its Boteti Mining (Pty) Ltd subsidiary. Located, near Letlhakane village, the mine has over the years gained international limelight due to its discovery of high quality rough diamonds. One of its notable achievements was when it recovered one of the second largest diamond ever found in history at 1.111 carats in 2015.
