Local Suppliers and employment

Local Suppliers and employment

Using Local Suppliers

SMFG had a workforce of more than three hundred employees and contractors as of early 2020. SMFG therefore needs regular and significant quantities of supplies including food, construction materials, office and field supplies, wood-based fuel and a wide range of other materials. All these supplies are purchased locally unless they cannot be found at a reasonable price, in particular food, or cannot be supplied responsibly. Likewise, SMFG always seeks to use local contractors first for construction, roadworks and other jobs.

Local Employment

SMFG’s local content is most evident in its staff and contractors. As of January 2020, over 97% of its staff at Nimba were Guineans, of which 26% came from the two sous-prefectures surrounding the Project, 71% from Lola Prefecture, and 86% from Guinée Forestière.

Building Guinean Skills

As part of the Project’s prefeasibility study, a review is being done of the types and numbers of managers, professionals, tradespeople and unskilled workers that the Project would require. With this, SMFG is formulating a plan to recruit, train and develop personnel from local areas.

SMFG has already developed a considerable, skilled workforce to be the core of the Project’s future workforce and working culture. Workforce development is done by on-the-job practical training, online courses and study travel, and assigning senior staff to different roles across the organisation so they learn the broad range of skills required to operate a mining project responsibly and successfully. This will allow them to be senior managers in this and other mining projects in future. The existing staff-development programme will be expanded for future operations.

SMFG supports building skills in surrounding communities. The company has funded the construction and renovation of many schools, and provided books, paper, pens, chalk and other essentials. It has supported students to revise for their end-of-year examinations, dramatically increasing the success rates in Lola Prefecture. SMFG provides free adult literacy and numeracy courses to certain nearby villages to assist adults in their daily lives and to help their children to succeed in school.

The Future

The Future

Looking forward to construction and operation of the Project, there will be tremendous challenges and opportunities to ensuring that local content continues to be maximised.

The social impact assessment will include specific recommendations and measures to ensure this happens.