Lumwana Mining Company has scooped the overall best mining company award for 2017 and bagged three other awards in best local content, best social investment and best employer categories.

And the Zambia Chamber of Mines also awarded several other mining companies including, Kansanshi Mining Plc at the award presentation gala in Ndola on Friday evening.

After receiving the awards, Barrick Lumwana Mining Company sustainability manager Christopher Mukala described the awards as a “tremendous achievement” for the mining giant.

“This is a tremendous achievement for the mine because it’s coming from the time when last year, we only won two awards; one for best social investment and another one for best employer. We’ve been working very hard as Lumwana Mining Company to build on what we got last year and learnt from our peers in the industry in terms of achievements,” Mukala said.

He said Lumwana Mining Company had upped their game, especially on social investment because of the grassroots investment scope where there was strong impact in the local community.

He attributed Lumwana’s triumph in winning the awards to Barrick’s scope of social investment and approach to social responsibility investment.

“In terms of local content, we have a very wide scope, not just in terms of employment, but many other areas that we look at, like women empowerment, alternative livelihoods, and farming. I think without any bias, we’ve done very well as a mining company as regards to performance; it is team effort of the members from different departments within the mine, well done to everyone, it’s a very good achievement,” Mukala added.

He said the awards presentation was important for the mines to showcase what they were implementing and an opportune time for different stakeholders to see the performance of mining companies.

Lumwana Mine had gone a long way in giving different aspects of local content programmes, which was its key strength in good performance at the awards presentation, according to Mukala.

Mukala further said that investment in the social sector was aimed at complementing government efforts, adding that Lumwana wanted to assist the host community within the available resources.

He also pointed out that Lumwana’s plan is to improve and develop the social sector remained very solid.

“We’ve the Lumwana Community Trust, a viable vehicle for three host chiefdoms surrounding mining operation [Mukumbi, Mumena and Matebo]. The mine provides funding every year for them to select projects of their own choice in their areas to do social investment,” said Mukala, who also added that different programmes like scholarships offered by the mine were a milestone and changed lives – Suma Systems