INFRASTRUCTURE
Airways and airports
Local airports are served by daily scheduled air flights from the capital Addis Ababa. Flights are twice daily by Fokker F40 and take 1 hour 15 minutes from Makelle and 1 hour 35 minutes from Axum. The Makelle and Axum airports were opened recently and have good asphalt runways. Addis Ababa has daily flights to Europe and thrice weekly flights to North America and South Africa.
Roads
The East Tigray Goldfield is accessible by road from three sides (west, east and south) and these gravel roads are currently being improved and extended. A new asphalt road has been constructed to link Tigray to the south, the latest development being a 100km long highway immediately south of Mekele. The asphalt road to Adigrat in the north is now complete.
A regional gravel road which bisects the goldfield east to west is being widened and the surface evened at present. Smaller tracks are now being constructed to link our gold prospects to the existing road network.
Water, electricity and fuel
A perennial water source is provided by the Wereii River which bisects the goldfield north to south. There are numerous sites suitable for construction of dams or weirs which could be used for a mine water supply.
A large hydro-electric dam, Ethiopia's biggest, is now in the mid stages of construction on the upper Tacasse River, about 80km to the west of our prospects. Electricity transmission lines were constructed about six years ago, linking Tigray to the country's hydro-electricity grid. A regional high-tension (110 Kv) electricity network is now being extended into the more remote areas of the state. The villages of Hawzen and Megab, which lie adjacent to our eastern prospects, were connected to the electricity grid in August 2003 thus bringing mainline power to within 1 to 10 km of the company's tenements.
Diesel fuel prices are very low, at around 35 US cents per litre, consequently fuel powered generators are a viable option for any initial small-working or for standby capacity.
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