Mining group commends Govt
at RHA and the cost to bring the mine back into production.”
It said Premier now intends to convene a meeting of the directors of RHA to agree a variation to the terms of tungsten firm’s shareholder agreement.
This would allow Premier to increase its shareholding in the Matabeleland North-based mining company unless NIEEF has remedied the ongoing breach under the revised Management Agreement by providing the outstanding funding on or before the date of the meeting.
Premier said NIEEF had agreed to invest US$6 million into RHA in accordance with the recommissioning budget, and after converting the RTGS dollars funding provided by NIEEF into United States dollars, the current shortfall is US$4,94 million, including the further funding of US$108,806 the fund agreed to provide as announced in May this year.
The mining group has further agreed with its offtake partner, to independently revalidate the conclusions reached in the Technical Report and
Development Plan (as announced on 3 October 2018) that RHA could operate profitably on a reduced throughput of 6 000 tonnes per month from underground operations undertaken through the existing vertical shaft.
“On satisfactory conclusion of this review, it is anticipated that our offtake partner will then be in a position to consider fully funding the return to production (estimated to require funding of US$1,7 million), subject to resolution of the present impasse with NIEEF,” it said.
On the Zulu lithium and tantalum project, Premier said based on recent communication with the Ministry of Mines and Mining Development, it continues to be encouraged that finality in regard to its Exclusive Prospecting Order application is achievable in the near future.
“Whilst the lengthy delay has been disappointing, our internal review of the publicly available historic data on the potential prospecting area is encouraging and we look forward to further updating the market when the EPO is awarded,” said Premier. — @okazunga.
Labour Matters
MANY organisations that lose disciplinary cases before outside labour tribunals wrongly put blame on human capital practitioners yet decisions to dismiss an employee will not have involved them. Many disciplinary procedures do not involve human capital practitioners, they are merely important advisers throughout the process. Unfortunately, many senior managers do not take the professional advise of human capital practitioners and opt to do their own thing and when the case is messed up, it is thrown to the human capital practitioner.
I recall a case against a foreman which had no thread of evidence and the human capital practitioner advised that there was no case against the foreman and he went on to give his legal position and case law to support his position. The General Manager overruled him and dismissed the foreman. When the matter went to the Labour Court, the foreman was reinstated. The court cited cases that had been given by the human capital practitioner.
The Board was not impressed by the cost of reinstating the foreman after four and a half years. The amount of backpay was huge in USD and the employer had been given 30 days to pay, a thing that would impact negatively on cashflow.
When I was contracted to find out what had gone wrong, I discovered a number of things were at play. First, the General Manager was new at the time and did not trust the managerial team that was there and as such he was on a mission to remove some managerial employees and replace them with his own boys. At the time of my investigation, he had dismissed four other managerial employees and replaced them with people he had worked with before.
I looked at each of the four cases as they were pending before the Labour Court and could not see