By Septimus Senessie in Kono
The Secretary General of the striking mine workers at the OCTEA Diamond Group says they have agreed to call off their 5-day long sit-down strike action which turned violent, leaving two dead.
Raymond Moriba said that following a meeting with Vice President Samuel Sam-Sumana they had resolved to resume work at a soon-to-be-announced date.
He said the mining company had agreed to pay them one month bonus and not three months as they claimed the company had agreed to do if they reached their target of 35,000 carats find.
Moriba told Politico that the other demands including improved pay and conditions and alleged racism by white South Africans would be addressed later.
But the company spokesman, Ibrahim Sorie Kamara says they are not willing to meet any demands “under duress”. He told Politico that before the strike went nasty they had agreed to some of the demands which he would not say but that all of that had now been withdrawn owing to the violence and alleged burning of the company generator and a building inside the well-fortified site.
Kamara said that they were not ready to continue negotiations with the hundreds of striking workers until their safety and security was guaranteed. He said between 100 and 150 expatriate workers and their families who had joined them for Christmas were now holed up in the site and could not move because the striking workers had threatened to harm them if they did.
Meanwhile Vice President Sam-Sumana yesterday ended his two-day visit to Koidu to help mediate. He reportedly told bereaved families of the two deceased that the matter would be investigated, before giving them Le 2 million each, according to eye witnesses.
Earlier in the day motorbike taxi riders had disrupted life in Koidu demanding for the body of their colleague shot dead on Tuesday. The body was later released to them and they laid him to rest. The other corpse was also released to the family.
The latest strike at the OCTEA mine follows a similar one exactly five years ago when in December 2007 two people were again shot dead following protests against the company known then as Koidu Holdings. It led to the government suspending the activities of the company which further laid off over two-thirds of its workers. The company is the largest investor in the country's diamond mining sector. But workers at the mine say they work under inhuman conditions, accusing their national mine workers union of conniving with the company. Among other demands they want to be allowed to form their own local union.
