The unemployed youth of Govan Mbeki Municipality and the Govan Mbeki Chamber of Commerce and Industry members have protested against Elikhulu Mine Project for the past two weeks.
The protest was also joined by some of the ANC councillors. They demanded that the project which is valued at roughly 1,6 billion should employ local people. The Elikhulu project entails the construction of facilities and infrastructure at Evander to retreat gold plant tailings at the rate of 1 million tonnes per month.
Govan Mbeki Chamber of Commerce and Industry leaders met with Elikhulu project management to discuss the way forward and a memorandum of understanding was signed by both parties on Thursday, 12 October.
They both agreed that fifty local companies from Govan Mbeki Chamber of Commerce and Industry will be given preferred procurement opportunities to participate in Elikhulu project. It was further agreed that the qualifying companies will be gradually absorbed as and when work packages are available.
The project also commited to employ two hundred qualifying local people, of which the first twenty will be employed on or before 30 October 2017, whilst the remainder will be absorbed progressively.
However, Govan Mbeki Chamber of Commerce and Industry representatives criticised the Multi-disciplinary international engineering group, DRA Projects for resisting to comply with the signed agreement.
