Our projects are not regarded as environmentally sensitive and are located within a historical mining domain. The low-risk ore and non-toxic beneficiation process minimises our environmental impact. However, we continue to closely monitor dust, water, and waste management to ensure compliance with our environmental management plan.
Our dedication to environmental stewardship is set out in our environmental, climate change, sustainable development and water stewardship policies.
Our group diversity policy promotes:
Our employees come from diverse backgrounds, with approximately 31% being female, including those in senior management positions.
We believe in the preferential hiring of local, regional, and national employees. This policy aligns with the government’s expectations and helps the Namibian economy grow stronger.
Despite staff retention challenges at our remote Uis mine, we’ve maintained a high number of local employees, with 128 people directly employed and 187 more employed through contracting companies. The majority of our employees are Namibian.
Our focus is on retaining and hiring skilled workers from the competitive Namibian mining industry. We’re committed to training talented individuals and developing their skills. This helps us to prepare for future operation expansions as well as reduce employee turnover.
One of our objectives is to benefit the community by making direct investments to support local initiatives and development. We have a passion for improving services and maximising opportunities in the Uis community.
To ensure our investments are effective, we’re creating a long-term plan for social upliftment projects. Our corporate social investment committee, consisting of the general manager, mine manager, and members from the corporate office, oversees these efforts and provides funds for projects in health, education, sports, and infrastructure.
Although we’ve made a lot of progress, we still have some way to go in supporting the community and improving infrastructure. We’re eager to forge long-term partnerships and undertake projects in order to make this happen in Uis and its surrounding areas.
We firmly believe our diverse and talented workforce is essential for the success of our business. We work to attract, develop, and retain such talent, creating a supportive environment where people can reach their full potential.
Our local communities are also critical to our success, as they supply our talented workforce and play an important role in determining our social licence to operate. We recognise the importance of ensuring that the communities and countries where we operate benefit from our presence. This is not only the right thing to do, but also good for business.
As a gemstone-rich country, Namibia provides a means of income for local artisanal miners. Because our mining licences cover a wide area around Uis, we often encounter such informal miners. Instead of working against these individuals, we wish to work alongside them and have found mutually beneficial ways of doing so.
At Andrada, we also aim to assist and support the regional and national communities through our supply chain. For this reason, we support local businesses and contractors whenever possible.
As stated in our human rights policy, we believe in giving workers the right to join unions and bargain collectively. We also prioritise treating our employees with dignity and respect, creating a workplace that is safe and healthy for all.
Approximately 69% of our employees are union members. We work together with our employees and their unions to maintain open communication, which assists with the prevention of strikes and lockouts.
