Omai signs contract for Linmine stripping, mining services
By Patrick Denny
Stabroek News
December 16, 2002
The Linden Mining Enterprise (Linmine) has contracted Omai Gold Mines Limited (OMGL) to provide it with stripping and mining services.
Prime Minister Sam Hinds who has portfolio responsibility for the sector says that the contract was signed on Tuesday after Linmine found the prices at which the service is to be provided "attractive".
He said too that OMGL has already begun mobilizing resources for the operations but could not say when it would begin.
Kenneth Bell, field secretary of the Guyana Mine Workers Union which represents the workers in the mining and stripping section at Linmine also could not say when OMGL would begin its operations. But with the signing of the contract Bell says that the workers remaining in the section will be given a month's notice.
He also confirmed that a number of the workers in the section have taken voluntary redundancy as some others have done in other parts of Linmine. These workers, about 140 in all, have all received their severance benefits.
The severance benefit comprises the tax-free payment of six weeks pay for every year of service up to a maximum of 104 weeks and a training grant equivalent to 10 per cent of the redundancy pay.
Bell says that OGML is being contracted to do the mining and stripping operations, as the practice of the company years ago was to establish the desired lead-time between stripping and mining. He says that at present both mining and stripping are taking place simultaneously.
Stabroek News understands that the establishment of the desired lead-time would help to minimise the difficulties the restructured Linmine would face in its stripping, mining and marketing activities while assisting it to retain what share of the market it still has for its products. OGML's Canadian parent company is due to take a majority interest in Linmine next year, and the Guyana government will have a 20 per cent share.
Bell says that some other workers from the stripping and mining section are due to go off on Friday under the voluntary severance arrangements.
With the planned Cambior takeover, Linmine's 1200 workers would be severed and some 400 of them will be rehired under new terms for pay and conditions of work. Horace James, Linmine's chief executive officer, says the workers who opted for voluntary redundancy "wanted to get on with their lives."
When it takes over the Linmine operations, Cambior will switch to the use of trucks and backhoes for the stripping and mining activities. This will require far less workers than the bucket-wheel and dragline method now in use at Linmine and just as importantly will consume far less power.
