No government bailout for Discovery Metals-Mokaila

Government is in no position to provide any kind of relief to the cash strapped Australian junior miner, Discovery Metals Limited. Responding to a question in parliament Minister of Minerals, Energy and Water Resources, Kitso Mokaila said his ministry is greatly concerned by the massive job losses within the mining industry but he conceded that nothing much can be done about it.

Mokaila said DML’s pains come a long way and government has even made efforts to help the company. He pointed that as a way of relieving them from their financial challenges DML was allowed to defer P24 million worth of training royalties. “The problem is that DML was already high in debt and there was nothing that could be done,” he noted adding that the company often complained about their high electricity generation bill, which was added on by their high operation cost.

Said Mokaila, “their use of open cast mining which automatically subjected them to a stripping ratio of thirteen to one, which only gave them one tone ore from 13 tones of dirt mined is expensive.” Also the high costs of doing business aggravated by the unstable commodity prices worsened the mining junior problems.

“Currently all we could do is put our heads together and come up with solutions.” He pointed out that government is already connecting power grids towards Maun to help the mines in the area with power challenges.