Goldfields Ghana has warned contractors to abide by the local content rule of employing people from the catchment areas of the mine or risk not being engaged at all.

According to the company, this is to ensure that the local citizens get the maximum benefit of its production.

This came to light at the just ended Suppliers Conference at the Goldfield’s mining site in Tarkwa.

Goldfields in March 2018 moved from ownership mining where it takes responsibility of all workers of the mines to contract mining where it outsourced the workers.

After a year of operating the new model at its Tarkwa mines, Goldfields has revealed that part of its success story is the commitment to employ local players around the mining community.

Head of Supply Chain for Goldfields West Africa, Theophilus Otchere told JoyBusiness that the company has insisted on having the majority of local players in its mining concession.

Mr Otchere said, “We have made a conscious effort in developing local suppliers with our three years progression where about 90 per cent of our spending is dedicated to local manufacturers and materials in Ghana.”

He added, “If you scale it further down, we have suppliers called local content suppliers which are located within our catchment area and we have social contracts with them to grow and sustain Operations and the local economy.”

“By so doing, for every contract given by Goldfields, we ensure that as a requirement before you can be given a contract, local employment on the Goldfields concession should be a key requirement in your Operations” he noted.

According to Mr Otchere, the company also produced the highest gold for last year as a result of the business model.

“As part of the change over from Owner to contract mining, one of the key requirements for anybody or firm that want to partner Goldfields was to ensure that up to 85 per cent of our legacy employees were engaged in the contract model which we enforced as part of the process.

"I can tell you that this has helped us a lot when you look at the numbers we have seen one of the best cost, we've seen mining contractors move significant volumes, we've seen a success story in the entire value chain when we entered into contract mining.”

“You saw the 2018 production figures we produced 750 thousand ounces which is very significant innovation and all thanks to the support of the contract miners.  I will say is the highest because it's been less painful and less cost expensive for us as an organization to achieve this assuming we have to achieve the same volumes for the previous years" he said.

More than 300 suppliers and contractors of Goldfields attended the conference under the theme: “Sustainable supply chain through partnership."