Production has been suspended at a giant Canadian-owned gold mine in Mauritania after the state ordered expatriates whose work permits had expired to stay home, a company spokesman told reporters on Saturday.
The latest stoppage at Tasiast mine in the country’s north comes a month after workers went on strike over plans by the owner Kinross to slash costs. The strike lasted 18 days.
A spokesman for Tasiast Mauritanie Ltd, a local subsidiary of Kinross, said the decision to suspend production was taken after Mauritanian Ministry of Labor on Friday “ordered all expatriates at Tasiast mine who, according to the ministry, do not have valid work permits, to stop working.”
The company “disagreed with the decision,” but had decided to temporarily halt output to ensure the workers’ safety, he added.
The spokesman, Raphael Sourt, did not say how many workers were affected by the Mauritanian government order.
Mine representatives were working with the Mauritanian government “to try to resolve the problem as quickly as possible in order to be able to resume normal operations,” he added.
The Mauritanian government, for its part, said it had intervened after a “routine” inspection of the mine to ensure workers had the necessary permits and that their rights were being upheld.
The stoppage comes a week after the workers ended an 18-day strike after the company agreed to begin talks on a collective pay agreement.
Nearly all the mine’s 1,041 permanent staff had taken part in the stoppage.
The mine, which produced 219,045 of gold equivalent ounces (6.2 tonnes) last year according to the company’s Web site, was once the world’s third-largest, but production has suffered from the falling price of gold.
Strikes have previously hit the mine in 2013 and 2011, also over pay and conditions.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”