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Davis Ndumiso Sibanda, Labour Matters
Many organisations have found themselves failing to meet set performance targets due to negative impact of badly managed community relations.

The world over, there are recorded cases of big projects that either failed to take off or struggled to meet set goals because community relations were not well managed.

Top of the list is employment opportunities for locals. I worked on a major project in Zambia and setting up, we were met by a local officer from Government who told us “in this province there are rules, there are three chiefs whose people you have to employ and the procedure is that the recruitment is done through a sustainability officer who registers all job seekers from the three chiefs and you get all your labour from the sustainability officer”.

All applicants’ papers should have the chief and sustainability officers’ stamp. On inspection, if you are found to have employed an outsider you will be ordered to take an equal number of locals.

You only employ outsiders after the sustainability officer has given you written clearance to do so after failing to get a local person.

The message was loud and clear, more-so given that while we were three days on site, one contractor who was found with unregistered Zambian nationals was ordered to engage the same number from local  chiefs.

There were lessons learnt and among them was who should be responsible for community relations, further we noted that the whole issue did not end with social responsibility programmes crafted from the boardroom, but called for getting on the ground and fully understanding the communities and deciding on how you can co-exist with it for mutual benefits of both parties.

On the face of it, it is easy to say the responsibility for community relations should be given to Human Capital people but it is much more than that as some issues have nothing to do with workers and work. This has meant that human resources practitioners responsible for community relations have had to learn a new set of skills.

Mining has been one sector where community relations has been a major area of management given the fact that the mine occupies land that communities were using for various activities and there will be issues such as loss of grazing land, contamination of drinking water, relocation of homes, schools and graves, interference with sacred places, re-routing of roads and many others.

Further, communities in most cases confront the mine with a huge “shopping basket”, which covers demand for jobs, construction of homes for displaced people, building of schools, roads, bridges, clinics, provision of transport and many others.

In urban centres community relations never used to be a big issue but with urbanisation we have seen a rise in business versus community disputes. I recall cases where citizens of towns and cities have mobilised against recruitment of outsiders. This problem will need careful management if organisations are to maintain relations with communities they work in.

On one occasion, I asked villagers who were drinking at a local bottle store why they were vandalising the local mines property. They unanimously replied that the mine is exploiting resources without giving their children jobs and it does not help the community in any way.

If anything, there was bad blood between the community and the mine because the mine had not managed community relations well.

Some community relations issues can have workers and the community standing together against the employer.

A more recent case is the Marikana one in South Africa.

In worse cases, organisations particularly mines and plantations fail to manage the micro-community relations involving people living in the mine or plantation.

Children, wives and other family members who live in the mine are stakeholders who have to be managed carefully as they can easily lead to the collapse of the mine, loss of lives and loss of productivity. In Zimbabwe we have had many such cases like the Danly Mine incident, Zisco and many others where people were injured and human life was lost.

In conclusion, human resources practitioners should ensure that organisations have sold community relations policies that are backed by equally strong programmes.

Davies Ndumiso Sibanda can be contacted on: email: [email protected]  Or cell No: 0772 375 235