NEWMOUNT LAUNCHES SKILLS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME (PAGE 23, JAN 30, 2010)

NEWMONT Ghana Gold Limited (NGGL), which is operating the Ahafo Mine in the Asutifi District in the Brong Ahafo Region, has launched a programme dubbed: “Skills Development for Income Improvement Programme (SDIIP).
The programme is designed to enhance the quality of life of about 1,652 men, women and children affected by the expansion of the company’s mining activities to a new area within its concession called Amoma Pit.
The SDIIP is to be implemented by the Opportunities Industrialisation Centres International (OICI) from other funding sources after an initial support by NGGL for one year.
The current expansion of the Amoma Pit, which covers 562 hectares in the stool lands of Ntotroso, is the fourth pit of NGGL’S operation in the Ahafo area.
The programme is focused on agricultural and vocational skills development as the mechanism for re-establishing livelihoods of the PAPs.
The Amoma resettlement initiative also includes the payment of cash compensation, replacement of houses for people qualified for resettlement.
At a workshop to launch the programme, the Social Investment Manager of NGGL (Ahafo Mines), Mr Kwasi Amponsah Boateng, said the company recognised the potential social and environmental effects that could be created through the development of mining projects.
He said to ensure proper and appropriate mine development, the NGGL had endorsed the concept of sustainable development.
Mr Amponsah said in order to prevent impoverishment, ‘‘we recognise that the resettlement programme must focus on preventing any risk of leaving our host communities impoverished”.
He stated that prior to the SDIIP, Newmont had commissioned OICI to implement another programme known as “Livelihood Enhancement and Community Empowerment Programme (LEEP)” in February, 2005, which was to restore the livelihood of the Ahafo South project affected persons (PAPs).
According to Mr Boateng, the LEEP had three objectives and accomplished seven intermediate results.
They include improved sustainable food and cash crop production among 750 farmer households, post-harvest handling and storage losses reduced to five per cent, as well as small and medium-size enterprises strengthened for income generation for 1,500 men and women.
The Brong Ahafo Regional Economic Planning Officer, Mr Mike Krakue, said apart from the legally required interventions, such as the payment of compensations and relocation, which the company was mandated to implement, the NGGL had also gone out of its way to implement programmes such as the LEEP, Ahafo Agribusiness Growth Initiative (AAGI) and the Agricultural Improvement and Land Access Programme (AILAP).
He stated that one of the most obvious features of involuntary resettlement was that people displaced were often those who had the least access to resources and were most likely to become impoverished.
Those people, Mr Krakue said, shouldered a disproportionate share of the costs of development but usually gained the least.
He said impoverishment resulted from eight risks, namely landlessness, joblessness, homelessness, marginalisation, food insecurity, increased morbidity and mortality, loss of access to common property resources and failure to articulate concerns.
The Chairman of the Board of Directors of OICI, Mr W.P. Bray, explained that his organisation, which is a non-profit making, mainly focused on improving the quality of life of low-income disadvantaged individuals, through the provision of sustainable human resource development services, through education and skills training, agriculture and food security, health and nutrition, water and sanitation, entrepreneurship and business development, and micro-financing, among other interventions.