By: Nicholas Osei-Wusu
AngloGold Ashanti has released about 100 acres of its concession in the Obuasi Mine back to the community to be developed into an ‘Eco Industrial Park’ to serve as a catalyst for industrialization of the Obuasi geographical enclave.
The Mine, through consultation with its key stakeholders, has developed a land use plan to determine the most suitable business model to attract investors to set up various commercial activities within the Park.
The Senior Manager, Sustainability, of AngloGold Ashanti, Emmanuel Baidoo, who disclosed this explained that, the initiative is part of the 10-year Socio-Economic Development Plan towards making Obuasi in particular and the Adansi traditional area in general ‘Resilient and Socio-Economically Self-Sustaining’ beyond the Mine in times of eventuality.
This came to light during a field trip for the media to some interventions of the Obuasi mine towards the progress of Obuasi.
The Senior Manager, Sustainability of AngloGold Ashanti, Mr. Emmanuel Baidoo, explained that, the vision is to ultimately make the Obuasi Campus an autonomous university and to also help to open up Obuasi.
“We have, in consultation with the traditional leaders, the local government agency and the EPA, agreed to add value to the land and that is where we’re considering the Industrial Eco Park”, he said.
Mr. Baidoo continued ” it is a mixed land use concept to put the land to. We have completed the land use plan and we’re going through a process of setting up a vehicle that is a business model to drive implementation of the plan.”
On the periodic agitations and encroachment on AngloGold’s active concessions by sections of the indigenes, the Senior Manager, Sustainability, hinted that, government is making arrangement to establish a permanent Military Forward Base at Obuasi to protect both life and property and to address the upheavals.
The media field trip
The media from Accra, Kumasi and Obuasi were taken on a trip to some of the major interventions in Obuasi by AngloGold Ashabti, Obuasi Mine.
In the health sector, the Mine has set up the A.G.A. Health Foundation, previously the AngloGold Hospital about 80 percent of which patients are residents of the operational communities.
The 150-bed facility is said to be the 2nd biggest referral facility in the Ashanti region after the Okomfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi.
At the AngloGold Malaria Limited, AGAMaL, an independent subsidiary of the Mine, it was told that, it is a deliberate intervention complementing the National Malaria Elimination Programme to fight the high burden of malaria in Ghana and providing the periodic Indoor Residual Spraying intervention in 13 districts in Ghana and protecting about one point-three million people during the spraying periods against malaria.
It also came to the fore that, the Obuasi Government Hospital has since 2019 achieved a Zero Maternal Death feat and aiming to sustain the laurel, thanks to the replacement of the old dilapidated ill-equipped Mother and Baby Unit with a modern one.
Another intervention is the free engineering training for interested youth selected from the various catchment communities by their traditional and opinion leaders which has already seen about 300 beneficiary youth in mechanical and automotive engineering training.
The journalists also visited the Obuasi Campus of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, KNUST which is housed in the part of the administration infrastructure ceded by the Mine to offer tertiary education to qualified youth from the Adansi traditional area and beyond.
The Campus now has about three thousand students pursuing various science and engineering-based programmes.
The Journalists visited also the A.G.A. Basic school providing a hybrid educational system, the chunk of which enrolment are from the catchment communities.
Concerns of operational area of the gold Mine.
That the Adansi traditional area in Ashanti, particularly the Obuasi geographical enclave, remains a major mining catchment with AngloGold Ashanti being the main gold mining company is a fact.
The mine has over the years been the social, economic and commercial mainstay of the area serving as the major source of both direct and indirect employment for many of the people within the area.
This reality became obvious following the four-year suspension of underground gold mining as part of the restructuring of the mine beginning in 2014, as a result of both internal and external factors.
This is because, there was no economic and commercial alternative for the catchment communities for which reason, despondency replaced the high aspirations among the people.
It is to avert a recurrent of that situation that, management of the gold mine, upon commencement of the Obuasi Redevelopment Project in 2019, and upon stakeholder consultations, came up with a 10-Year Socio-economic Development Plan spanning the period 2022 to 2031.
This plan, which is an addition to the Obuasi Community Trust Fund, in which the Mine disburses two Dollars of every ounce of gold mined, is to guide the AngloGold’s socio-economic investment to ultimately position Obuasi as a resilient and socio-economically self-sustaining community even without AngloGold.
So far, the Mine has invested about five million Dollars on various social and economic interventions in Obuasi between 2019 and last year.
These cut across physical infrastructure, health, formal education, youth apprenticeship in engineering, technical and vocational skills training towards development of more entrepreneurs and employers to reduce the rate of unemployment in the area as well as over reliance on the Mine for decent income.
One of such beneficiaries, Frank Yeboah told GBCNews that, due to the support of the Mine, he has not just established a wastes recycling plant to produce plastic materials, but is also employing about 30 hands directly and indirectly.
