I LISTENED with keen interest to the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) latest Sunday Interview which featured Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) Acting Chief Executive Officer David Ng’andu.
Any news about KCM was all I anxiously wanted to hear. I must hasten to mention that the Acting CEO was elaborate throughout the interview.
Due to the gravity of his technical jargons, I, with probably lots of naivety, captured less salient points that made the interview worthwhile.
Mr Ng’andu indicated that the Konkola Deep Mining Project in Chililabombwe, which had been sunk  to about 1.5 kilometres was a success and the first of its kind in Africa and had inevitably extended the mine life, while the two  state-of-the -art concentrators at Nchanga Mine in Chingola had also been established to suit modern mining standards.
He said those two concentrators had increased processing capacity from about 10 million tonnes per annum to about 14 million per annum.
That said, however, what seemed to boggle my mind most was the assertion that the copper ore body grade had slumped from five per cent as it was between 2000 and 2005 to less than one per cent, although the ore body was still in abundance implying that the mining business has become less profitable due to increased production costs.
And that formed the basis why KCM adopted a temporal single sourcing system as a cost cautionary measure which idea was interestingly been done away with in order to revert to the inspiring in sourcing.
From that interview and  based on a layman’s perspective, I may not be totally wrong to  conclude that KCM may never get back to its glorious days and is now more into ore processing than mining, thereby giving less hope to its general populace.
Could diversification be the only solution to this challenge? I hope everyone understands that KCM woes are not to do with Patriotic Front Government but with copper ore body’s poor grade.
McDONALD MULONGOTI
Chingola