Kenya-Canada-mining
   Kenyan farmers locked in land row with Canadian mining firm

   MAUMBA-NGULUKU, Kenya, April 3 (AFP) - A compensation row between a
Canadian mining company and 20,000 landowners on Kenya's Indian Ocean coast
is
threatening to derail a titanium mining project worth 525 million dollars,
according to the firm's officials.
   Small scale farmers in Kenya's southern Kwale district have vowed not to
allow Canada's Tiomin Resources Corporation Inc. to start mining titanium
ore
in the area unless they are paid an annual land rent of 10,000 shillings
(130
dollars) per acre (53 dollars per hectare) and a relocation fee for each
smallholder of 50,000 shillings (670 dollars).
   The company is offering 2,000 shillings (27 dollars) in annual rent and
9,000 shillings (120 dollars) as compensation for forcing the farmers out
of
their land.
   The landowners have threatened to chase away the firm's officials from
the
area if their demands are not met.
   A meeting between the resident manager of Tiomin Resources Corporation
Inc.
Francoise Goutier and the farmers at the weekend ended in disarray when the
two parties failed to agree.
   Titinium is a silvery-grey metallic element added to various steel
alloys
used in the manufacture of jet engines or missiles because of its heat and
corrosion-resistant qualities.
   Goutier said the farmers' demands were way above what her company was
able
to offer.
   "Tiomin can only offer them what we have. We can not be held to ransom
by
farmers who want too much from us", she told journalists at Maumba-Nguluku,
150 kilometres (90 miles) south of the port city of Mombasa, at the weekend.
   "We shall demand what is rightfully ours. Our land should not go for
peanuts to enrich these Canadians," farmers' representative John Nyamai
told
AFP.
   Soil scientist Wellington Wamicha said the titanium mining project would
be
too dangerous to undertake because the area contained large deposits of
Thorium 232 and Uranium, both radioactive elements.
   str/jnm/afm

sidi sanneh

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------------