Kingho investment to pay Le.750 million annually to mining communities

Business

Sierra Leone-Freetown: The Director of Community Affairs, Kingho Investment Company, Judith Kosseh, has told journalists that their company has agreed in a signed document with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to be paying Le.750 billion Leones annually to communities in their operational areas. The said money according to her as per calculation, will represent one percent of the company’s annual shipment costs, which will go for the Community Development Action Plan.

The company maintained, the amount is not fixed hence, assuming everything is equal as at the time of calculation and that, if prices of iron ore did not fluctuate, the amount is expected to either increase or decrease but, government will definitely have a means of calculating it based on receipts submitted by the company for payment of their taxes. Such mathematical calculation on annual payment of one percent of all shipments made are done mostly based on revenue payment for the previous financial year, along with receipts of sales of ore, which make it difficult to be fixed.

The Director of Community Affairs for Kingho Investment Company spoke at a press conference on Thursday 29th July 202, in Freetown while the company was presenting to journalists their second quarter 2021 Community Development Action Plan projects, for communities in the operational areas.

Madam Kosseh stated, “As a group, we take community engagement and environmental issue very seriously. That is why we set up a specialist directorate to work closely with stakeholders and communities at large to ensure that our operations do not negatively affect their normal livelihood but also provide an opportunity for developments.”

She mentioned that the directorate at the company has developed an internal program to help build the capacity of their staff in dealing with important aspects of their operation, which according to her is based on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) statutory provisions. She said they recently developed a Community Development Action Plan (CDAP), a mandate by government, to ensure good working relations is observed between them and their operating communities.

She said, “Over the past three months, we have undertaken several projects using chiefdom-based structure through the Chiefdom Representative Committees (CRC) set up in chiefdoms we are operating including, Simiria, Dansogoia and Sambaia in Tonkolili District and Kamasondo in Port Loko District.”

She said despite the fact that the committee is inclusive and selection is done by chiefdom authorities, they have been providing supportive roles to them hence, their engagement is more focused on monitoring. She confirmed, this model of working with communities to ensure effective and sustainable implementation of community owned projects have so far been successful.

One of the Community Affairs staff at Pepel, Mohamed Turay, highlighted there are five thematic areas in the Community Development Actions Project which includes, Education, Health and Sanitation, Road, Agriculture and Women in agriculture. He said based on the fact that the company cannot employ everybody in their operational areas, they had turned into supporting women farmers with seed capital, equipment and farming implements.

Turay said based on the fact that the women farmers are doing well on their respective farms, the company had agreed to buy from them their produce as a way of ensuring more people in their operational areas are engaged by the company. He said the replication of the project in all communities has resulted into positive turnout on the number of women that are engaged presently in the farming project.

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