Are Kwale residents expecting too much?

PHOTO | NATION The residents of Kwale at the Coast appear to erroneously expect Base Titanium to lift them out of biting poverty.

What you need to know:

  • From schools to health centres, Kwale residents appear to have placed all their hopes of a better future in Base Titanium

The look on their faces spells misery. It portrays the dilemma of a people in desperate need of redemption from economic deprivation, the yoke of ignorance, and marginalisation.

Behind the faces of the young and the old, men and women in Kwale County is a series of failed expectations they had heaped on the company mining titanium in the area.

“We are very poor; we have neither water nor health facilities to talk of. The roads in this area are also in very poor condition and we hardly have anything to eat,” said 22-year-old Zuhur Omar, her six-month-old son strapped to her back.

She has never been inside a classroom, she told Smart Company, but is optimistic that her child will fare better because of the high school that has been constructed in the neighbourhood, a stone’s throw away from her home.

When Smart Company visited the residents, some of them complained that the health centres, schools, and water points that the titanium mining company had built were not enough.

They want the “cash” to feed their famished lot. This year has been particularly hard for them as there has been no rain. Their crops, save for the drought-resistant cassava, have withered a few months away from harvest time.

They say maize is their staple, but at the worst of times, drought kills their only hope for survival.

Base Titanium, the Australian firm that has sunk billions of shillings into prospecting and mining activities in the area, keeps in constant touch with them.

If all goes according to plan, the project is estimated to cost Sh27 billion ($310 million) when completed, hopefully by August this year.

Sh15 billion ($170 million) was raised as debt facility from six international development banks. The remaining Sh12 billion ($140 million) was realised through equity at the Australian Stock Exchange.

The company has spent Sh1.48 billion ($17 million) on an eight-kilometre access tarmac road to the mining site, Sh870 million ($10 million) on social, environmental conservation and community relocation, which also included setting up health centres, schools, social halls, and boreholes.

But local leaders can only smell money in the air whenever the company’s name is mentioned or a meeting called.

According to Hamisi Jumaane, one of the local leaders, they are lobbying the company to invest 30 per cent of the total revenues into the community as part of the incentives.

“We need about 30 per cent of the revenues injected into the community if this project is to last,” said Mr Jumaane after a meeting with other local politicians, the residents, and the company officials.

They have been pushing for an agreement with Base Titanium so that once mining starts, they can be part of the revenue-sharing pact. The mineral is to be shipped out by November this year.

According to Base Titanium’s general manager for external affairs and development, Mr Joe Schwarz, an estimated Sh27 billion ($298 million) is set to be injected into Kwale as “foreign direct investment” in the 13-year period that the company is looking to export the mineral from the site.

Exports are expected to rake in revenues in excess of Sh191.4 billion ($2.2 billion), estimated to be three times the value of all the minerals that the country exports. From this, the government is set to earn about Sh26 billion ($300 million) in tax and royalties in the next decade.

However, virtually all the community members that Smart Company interacted with dismissed claims that the titanium mining project would improve their lives, at least in the near future.

Torrent of promises

They claimed that they have been fed “a torrent of promises” they now believed would never benefit them. For instance, a secondary school has been built in the area at the cost of Sh20 million, but it appears to be an uphill task getting students to fill the classrooms.

A few metres away stands a health centre that cost the company Sh80 million, but is still not operational because the government is yet to supply the necessary drugs to enable it to start operating.

When one of their demands is met, the residents’ expectations go up, leading them to raise the bar even higher for the company to meet.

For instance, some want their children who have completed Form Four but are not yet trained to be employed to teach in the new school.

They also want to be employed to do manual jobs like slashing, dishwashing, cleaning, and security to enable them to improve their living standards.

They are not pleased that most of the jobs are not well paying and are seasonal and demand to be made permanent employees.

“It is our policy and commitment to give jobs to people within the project neighbourhood. Most of the jobs are contractual as we work with contractors who work on timelines. We have employed approximately 800 people from the local communities, but you find that their expectations are increasingly becoming unrealistic,” Mr Schwarz said.

The company has been left to manage the expectations of the residents, which seem to be getting out of hand.

Talk on the ground indicates that local politics are to blame for the unrealistic expectations.

The residents say their leaders have abandoned them and that they do not know how the money from the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) kitty has been used. MPs recently passed an allocation of Sh10 billion in Parliament to finalise CDF projects upon expiry of their tenure in office.

Politicians’ venom

According to Juma Mambo, a former councillor in the area and current chairman of the CDF committee in Msambweni, Kwale County residents seem to be susceptible to incitement by politicians’ to make unreasonable demands.

“They (local people) will always ask for more regardless of what you give them. There is too much politicking,” said Mr Mambo.

He expressed concern that the residents were pushing Base Titanium to meet their unrealistic demands.

“We expect the county government, which is to be in place after the elections, to work closely with the company and the community to provide the necessary road, education, health, and water infrastructure in area,” he said.

Bearable expectations

For a majority of the close to 500 people who were relocated about 30 kilometres to the south of the mining site, their expectations are quite bearable and not as unrealistic as those residing within the neighbourhood of the site.

Mwanasiti Mari who was moved to Ramisi, is contented with the small plot she now calls hers. She can now grow vegetables for sale to improve her household’s standard of living, something she couldn’t do at her former village where she lived as a squatter.

The only complain she has is that she was not allocated the five and a half acres of land as claimed by the mining company, but instead received only a small plot that is hardly one acre.