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Barrick Bulyanhulu gold mine back in production

Barrick's Bulyanhulu gold mine in Tanzania is back to full production after a strike halted operations in October.

NAIROBI (Reuters)  - 

Canadian miner Barrick Gold Corp's Bulyanhulu gold mine in Tanzania is back to full production following a strike that paralysed work, a Barrick Tanzania spokesman said on Thursday.

"Bulyanhulu is operational. Production-wise we are back to where we were before the industrial action," Teweli K. Teweli, Barrick Tanzania spokesman, told Reuters by telephone from the mine in northwest Tanzania.

About 1,000 of the mine's 1,971 workers initially walked off the job on Oct. 25 in what Barrick, the world's leading gold producer, called an illegal action. Barrick later fired them.

Among the workers' grievances were inequities in salaries between foreign and local workers and non-payment of health and risk allowances and bonuses to locals.

In mid-November, Barrick Tanzania said the mine's operations had since risen to 65 percent capacity, and that 325 of the workers who had walked off the job had been rehired. At the start of the strike, operations fell to 25 percent. (Reporting by George Obulutsa; editing by Michael Roddy)

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