Zambia Copper Mines Caught Between Miners And Chinese Investors

By Shihoko Goto - Exclusive to Copper Investing News

Zambia's economic success hinges on how it can capitalize on its copper wealth, but the challenge remains how to reap in profits from its natural resources, while ensuring higher living standards for its citizens. While recently elected President Michael Sata made a point of campaigning against foreign investors abusing Zambian workers, Sata has toned down his rhetoric post-election and has insisted that foreign investors are welcome so long as they abide by the laws. At the same time, Chinese companies, in particular, have come under attack for their poor regard of Zambian copper mine workers.

A Human Rights Watch report released last week highlights the abuse faced by workers with long working hours and substandard health and safety conditions, in addition to hostility to trade unions by the four major Chinese-run copper mining groups operating in the biggest copper producing country of Africa.

“China's significant investment in Zambia's copper mining industry can benefit both Chinese and Zambians,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director of Human Rights Watch. “But the miners in Chinese-run companies have been subject to abusive health, safety and labor conditions and longtime government indifference.”

Nearly three-quarters of Zambia's exports and two-thirds of the country's government revenue comes from copper, and the Chinese have invested about $2 billion in the industry over the past few years to create nearly 20,000 jobs. All four Chinese copper mining groups that operate in Zambia are subsidiaries of state-owned China Non-Ferrous Metals Mining Group.

In its report “You'll Be Fired If You Refuse: Labor Abuses in Zambia's Chinese State-Owned Copper Mines,” the human rights violation watchdog stated that when workers at three of the four Chinese mines went on strike in October in protest of poor working conditions, at least 1,000 of them were fired. They were, however, reinstated after government pressure.

For its part, the Chinese embassy in Washington D.C. refuted that Human Rights Watch's findings are “not faithful to the truth,” as the companies “attach great importance to employees' legal rights, like safety, salary, and etc, and have taken serious measures to ensure the protection of those rights.”