Zambia’s Mopani Copper Mines says that it will have to shut down several areas of its operations, a move that could affect close to 5,000 employees amid an ongoing power crisis.
Mopani Copper Mines is a joint venture company owned by Glencore which has a 73.1% stake, First Quantum Minerals which holds 16.9% and ZCCM-IH which has a stake of 10%.
The Zambian mining joint venture stated that it was imperative for it to suspend some areas of operations owing to the suspension of power supply by Copperbelt Energy Corporation (CEC), a Zambian electric utility, News Ghana reported.
The mining firm said in the statement: “Although we shall work on optimizing the use of the limited power that we are receiving, we expect that we shall effectively have to close several areas and our scaled back operations may affect a total of 4,700 direct employees."
After a dispute over the new electricity tariffs, CEC, which purchases power from the state-owned electricity company, reduced the supply to Mopani to 94MW from 130MW.
Mopani said that with the restricted power supply it cannot carry on its operations safely.
Zambian President Edgar Lungu's spokesman said that the President has told Glencore’s unit to accept an increase in electricity prices "caused by the removal of state energy subsidies."
Presidential spokesman Amos Chanda was quoted by Reuters as saying: “We do not have problems with any other mining company other than Mopani and they are mining the same copper.
“If those reforms have been accepted in the consumer sector by the poor, the president expects all sectors of the economy have to accept the reforms.”
Image: Operations at the Mopani Copper Mines in Zambia. Photo: courtesy of ZCCM-IH.