In its continuous efforts of contributing to the welfare of the communities it operates in, mining giant Tati Nickel Mining Company (TNMC) handed over a Nursery school and a Library to the Shashe Bridge community in the North East District last week.
Addressing the community at the handover ceremony, the Corporate Services Manager of TNMC, Peter Meswele indicated that TNMC had taken the initiative to continue and embark on community developments as an effort of reaching part of the 2016 vision pillar of Botswana. Meswele indicated that TNMC has set an objective to focus much on promoting on developing the lives of the people and to work with government to help develop the lives of Batswana.
“Our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme started in 2006 as a strategy to help villages that are located in a radius of 50km from the mine,” said Meswele.
Meswele pointed out that the CSR projects are divided into two, namely Social Developments and Business Developments. He explained that the Social Development programmes were composed of Health and Education while the business developmental projects were focused on helping the communities on business initiatives.
He said that the business projects were very important as they helped to empower people to venture into various sectors, such as Agricultural projects and also help to create employment and alleviate poverty. He also stated that TNMC has indulged on such projects in villages like Matshelagabedi and Matsiloje where some individuals benefited from the business development projects in agriculture and tannery.
“We will continue on helping individuals in businesses that are capable of success,” he said.
Meswele indicated that TNMC has been involved in a lot of community projects ever since 2006 and they have focused much on improving education in schools, especially with the Results Improvement Initiative on Maths and Science subjects. He added that TNMC started in Secondary Schools with the building of library facilities and further buying other facilities to empower the students to improve the quality of education.
“This Peletolele Primary School Library is the first of its kind to be built at primary level, as we have much been involved in secondary schools,” Meswele said.
He added that the mine was impressed by the performance of the school in the recent results and in which it obtained 95.2% pass rate in the North East region. Meswele went further to establish that TNMC was impressed by the Shashe Bridge Community, especially the good cooperation between parents, teachers and the village authorities.
However, the head teacher, Grace Nkhwa, of Pelotelele Primary School in Shashe Bridge, applauded TNMC for promoting the culture of education at root level, indicating that education was one of the most important aspects of human development. She also highlighted that facilities such as the library were a reading hub, especially that Pelotelele Primary school was striving to achieve a 100% mark in the next exams.
The Chairman of North East District Council (NEDC), Florah Mpetsane, also commended TNMC for continuing to work hand in hand with NEDC to give a hand to the community and bring about development.
“North East District Council would not achieve such developments alone,” remarked Mpetsane.
TNMC built a library at Pelotelele Primary school worth P 240 000 and the Nursery is said to be worth P145 000. NEDC contributed 29 000 to buy books for the library. TNMC has been involved in many such projects in villages like Shashe Mooke, Tati Siding, Matsiloje and other villages in the vicinity of the mine.
