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| Tarime District Commissioner Major Edward Gowele |
By Lake Zone Watch Writer
North Mara Gold Mine in Tarime district, Mara region, has won praise for strengthening good relations with surrounding communities.
The warm relations between the mine and nearby villages has helped to minimize conflicts which were experienced in the past.
The conflicts were centred around the intrusion of the mine by groups of unknown people with intent to steal gold ore stones.
In the past, the intrusion of the mine had caused anger, mistrust and a state of insecurity between mine authorities and the villagers.
However, North Mara Gold Mine authorities took bold measures to iron out the differences with residents of the 11 nearby villages.
Tarime District Commissioner Major Edward Gowele has highly spoken of the North Mara mine for its initiatives towards mutual coexistence when he addressed journalists in his office recently.
"Relations between the mine and its neighbours can be described as extremely good stih the decline of incidents of the mine's intrusion," Major Gowele said.
Giving figures, he said incidents of intrusion have declined from 100 people in 2020 to a single person as of now.
The achievement is attributed to Barrick Corporation's heavy investment in the mining industry whose benefits have spilled over to surrounding communities in such sectors as health, education, water, infrastructure (roads), employment and helping villagers to launch income-generating projects as poverty reduction strategy.
North Mara Gold Mine is operated by Barrick in partnership with the Tanzania government through Twiga Minerals. Businesspeople who are contracted by the mine have created jobs mainly for the surrounding population.
"There are so many job opportunities for young men and women," Major Gowele.
"Community Social Responsibility (CSR) funds and the Barrick royalty set aside for financing various projects have had positive change to development initiatives," he said.
"People have seen the miracle brought by the CSR and royalty funds in transforming lives of the villagers and the outlook of their villages through various projects being implemented. Imagine a village getting 1.7bn/-. What a big sum for carrying out development projects!"
He said the CSR programme has been a catalyst for socio-economic transformation for the 11 villages near the mine.
He took time to praise the department responsible for public relations at the North Mara Gold Mine for strengthening the executing cordial relations with the public.
He also commended the villages for ensuring that the investor operates in a peaceful and secure environment.
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