Zambian police fought running battles Friday with hundreds of
former miners of the country's leading copper producers, Konkola
Copper Mines and Mopani Copper Mines, who were protesting Barclays
Bank PLC's (BCS) decision to withhold their benefits, officials
said Saturday.
According to Sikufela Mundia, the president of National Union of
Miners and Allied Workers, the ex-miners had planned to peacefully
demonstrate in Kitwe, on the Copper belt, before the police
intervened and dispersed them. Business and traffic came to a
standstill for several hours in Kitwe, the main mining city in the
province. At least a dozen ex-miners were arrested.
Union officials say that Barclays Bank Zambia Ltd., a unit of
U.K.-based Barclays Bank, withheld benefits of around 6,000 former
miners who had loan obligations by the time they were laid off.
Copper-mining companies operating in Zambia laid off up to 10,000
miners late last year following a steep drop in global copper
prices.
An official with Barclays Bank told Dow Jones Newswires
separately that the bank wouldn't release benefits of the ex-miners
with unpaid loans because they had no other way of repaying the
loans, now that they were no longer employed.
The miners say that the bank's decision to withhold their
benefits had denied them a living and most them are at risk of
being kicked out of their rented homes for nonpayment of rent.
Hundreds of miners remain jobless in Zambia despite recovering
copper prices.
Copper mining is the lifeblood of the Zambia's economy. Zambia
is Africa's largest copper producer.
-By Nicholas Bariyo, contributing to Dow Jones Newswires; +256
75 262 4615; bariyonic@yahoo.co.uk