The 4 villages surrounding Morila created a governing council for Morila, and nothing could be done except through the local governing council.
All funds from FFX went to the governing council, who not only doled out the funds, but were responsible for controlling all local employment at the mine, as well all demands for money, and all funds going to the hundreds of community and agricultural projects.
Did Morila really need over 1,700 employee's at the time of FFX?
It looks like almost everybody in every one of the 4 villages was getting a payout from FFX (via the 4 village governing council), like a pension, courtesy of the local governing council controlling the funds and not FFX being able to control them at source. As far as I've been able to discern, no member of FFX was even on the regional governing council.
If you add up all the funds distributed by the local governing council, given to them (or taken by them) from FFX, for schools and hospitals and agriculture and infrastructure, during just one year, from the projects described in the African journalist articles (from the French), you get to nearly AUD$30 million, and still the local governing council and 4 villages demanded more and more, even beyond this, from a mine that at the time was not producing, but was employing 1,700 locals. I'm not sure where they thought the endless supply of money was coming from.
It clearly became an untenable situation, even bordering on ludicrous at the end.
1,700 workers on a mine that wasn't yet operating, many with a shovel just wandering around doing nothing, employed as laborers (supposedly to stop them rioting), because they were the conditions demanded by the local governing 4 village council in order for FFX to own the mine - it was crazy.
And it clearly proves that FFX completely lost all control of the finances at the mine.
The local greed and corruption was so rife, that the plug just simply had to be pulled, they had to realize that the endless supply of free money from Australia had to end.
Like the journalists state in the articles, the government was non-existent, everything was being controlled and funded locally by the regional local council, who got all it's money from Morila S.A. via FFX.
Mali to renegotiate mining contracts.
https://www.mining.com/web/mali-to-review-and-renegotiate-mining-contracts/
Translated from the French.
If it doesn't translate property from the page for you, then I can post the English translation, if requested.
In the French African press there are other similar articles, but for now I'm just posting this one as an example.
Morila S.A. - A mine that meets the expectations of the population.
https://lesoussolmali-com.translate...;_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc
Gw
