The South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco) said Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions should not leave Delmas without fulfilling the socio-development promises it has made to the Delmas Community.
Members of Sanco, including Delmas community members, protested at the Sandvik Offices on 8 March to demand answers on why the promised projects are not fulfilled while the company is making a move from Delmas to Kempton Park. The promised socio-development project includes the unfulfilled upgrade of the Rietkol Primary School Computer Centre, the promise to supply furniture at the Siyanqoba Care Centre for the Disabled in Delmas which was not fulfilled, according to the founder Maria Mononyane, amongst others.
Sandvik said it has fulfilled the above mentioned projects through the spokesperson, Natalie Sontarie, marketing manager for Southern Africa. However, the Principal of Rietkol Primary School, Lucas Mthombeni said Sandvik only brought computers to the school in 2012 but they never returned to them for any upgrade through monetary fund as mentioned by Sontarie. In fact, the computers were brought to the school which did not have a fence and according to Mthombeni some computers were stolen within a week. The school educators who have been there from 2012 confirmed this to Highveld Chronicle.
Mthombeni, furthermore said that he had requested Sandvik to help to install a fence in 2020, however, Sandvik took them from pillar to post with countless excuses.
Further unfulfilled projects include the incubation and development of emerging local entrepreneurs through training and experience allegedly meant to be done through van Heerdens and Bidvest. Sandvik has not denied nor confirmed this.
According to Sanco community liaison officer, Dennis Ndala, Sandvik conducted a presentation with them in 2019 and promised to execute about 65 training programs to develop local businesses, however, Ndala said only 14 training programs were executed and this erupted into a protest. In their response, Sandvik said, “It is committed to assisting in the upskilling of community members and, to date, has sponsored the training of various local community members to gain their licences to operate forklifts and overhead cranes, as well as up training in welding and basic computer skills.”
According to Sontarie the projects include Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions Apprentice Programme which runs over a four-year period.
Despite Sandvik’s mention of the training programmes, according to Sanco only 14 out of 65 were completed. Follow up queries were sent to Sandvik regarding this.
The presentation document titled Sandvik Mining RSA Socio-development Footprint – Mpumalanga stipulated a total Corporate Social Investment amount of R4, 300 000 for Mpumalanga for 2018.
Ndala said he spoke to a senior manager Louis van Wyk afterwards in 2019 regarding the plan of action from a presentation with Sandvik on the promised projects Sandvik was promising to execute and unfortunately van Wyk allegedly dismissed him and told him, “I won’t tell him how to run his business.”
Ndala further said that van Wyk has since ignored Sanco’s queries regarding those commitments made by Sandvik to the community of Delmas.
Former employees of Sandvik, who were promised business development and training by Sandvik, were amongst protesters who said that only white businesses were given an opportunity to develop but black entrepreneurs are left in the cold. “There is no service provider for Sandvik that comes from Demas… van Wyk has his own interests to protect Sandik,” they said. The resolution from the protest is a further meeting between Sanco Delmas and Sandvik Management on 15 March for further negotiations.
