(SUNDAY MAIL ZW, REUTERS) Rio Tinto withdraws employees from Mozambique
Sunday, 03 November 2013 00:00

Mining company Rio Tinto is withdrawing the families of expatriate employees from Mozambique for their safety in a sign that an upsurge in kidnappings and violence is worrying investors. Other major companies developing big coal and gas reserves in the former Portuguese colony, Brazil’s

Vale, US oil company Anadarko and Italian oil and gas group Eni, said they were closely following political developments there, after clashes between the government army and opposition Renamo guerillas.

London-listed Rio Tinto, which mines and exports coal from north-west Tete province, said in a statement it was arranging to send home the families of foreign employees.

It announced the move a day after tens of thousands of Mozambicans marched in the capital Maputo and two other cities to protest against the threat of armed conflict and a recent spate of kidnappings by criminals.

“The safety of employees and their families is the number one priority,” Rio Tinto Coal Mozambique said, calling this a temporary precaution.

Its coal operations, including shipments, continue as planned, it said.

Seeking to reassure foreign investors and donors, President Armando Guebuza said last week he did not believe Mozambique ran the risk of sliding back into the kind of civil war that ravaged the country from independence in 1975 to 1992.

That conflict, which killed up to one million Mozambicans, was fought between Renamo and Guebuza’s Frelimo party.
Armed partisans of Renamo opposition leader Afonso Dhlakama have carried out sporadic raids and ambushes since April and in the last two weeks have clashed with government troops in central Sofala province and in Nampula province in the north.

Vale, which is also mining coal in Tete, and Eni, which is exploring large untapped offshore gas deposits in Mozambique’s Rovuma Basin, said they had no immediate plans to follow Rio Tinto’s action.

“We do not currently see a risk to our staff but we are of course monitoring the situation,” an Eni spokesman said. — Reuters.