Oranjemund — Anca Burger, the Project Engineer at the Marine Dredging Treatment Plant (MDTP) in Mining Area 1, is as rare as a precious stone in this male-dominated industry where she oversees the day-to-day running of a diamond mine.

Though located onshore, the diamonds recovered at this site that is still in its pilot phase, but expected to go on full steam by year-end, are part of the gems recovered offshore.

Burger counts among a group of women from a broad social spectrum with varying backgrounds, who are systematically being empowered because of their capabilities and qualifications by De Beers Marine Namibia, whose métier is offshore diamond mining.

Burger (31) acquired a degree in civil engineering at Stellenbosch University where she studied for four years after she matriculated in 1994 at Keimos Secondary School, in a grape-farming area located in the Northern Cape in neighbouring South Africa.

Running a diamond plant and charged with supervising men is not every woman's cup of tea, but this easy-going woman seems to have cultivated her self-driven persona from a working-class parentage.

Her mother Lula van Niekerk was a secondary school teacher at Keimos Secondary School. Attie her father worked in the health sector at Keimos.

After Stellenbosch in 1999, she had a short spell in the Borough of Lambeth in London where she was preoccupied with the transportation sector on projects related to the construction of the London Eye and the Millennium Bridge, before she moved to Namibia.

In a recent interview, she said her experience in London: "was very exciting".

After London, Namdeb's engineering programme beckoned and it was here she was recruited for two years on a multi-skilling course that involved "all aspects of mining engineering operations and where you also gained underground experience".

She tied the knot in 2000 and this mover and shaker passionately describes her husband Wicus Burger, also employed as an engineer at Namdeb, as "very supportive" of her.

On her immense task of overseeing 60 employees on the onshore diamond mine, Anca says: "I am legally responsible, if someone dies I could be prosecuted in court."

Her shift that begins at 06h30 until around 16h30 entails "active maintenance" and ensuring all mining and diamond treatment processes are in perfect working order.

Though she says she runs a "very modern plant", things normally break down and she has to use her engineering expertise to fix equipment that breaks down or malfunctions.

In response to a question on the number of women in the diamond-mining sector, Burger who is the only woman employed as a project engineer by De Beers Marine Namibia, said: "Women in mining, especially in the production sector, are a rare find, it is an anomaly. This sector was male-dominated especially underground. Previously women were not allowed to work underground. It was outlawed. But this has changed in recent years, while a lot has changed in the last couple of years."

The De Beers family of companies employs numerous women, several of whom are in senior management positions. Others are diamond sorters, engineering planning clerks, mineralogical technicians, bedrock operators and security officers, among other jobs.

And the fact that some of the women have taken previously male-predominated jobs such as boilermakers, and fitters and turners, indicates a gradual but seismic mind-shift.

She added that local diamond companies, particularly De Beers Marine Namibia - a leading offshore diamond miner - gives preference to women, thus levelling the uneven field.

Her plant has a capacity to process 400 tons per hour of gem-bearing gravel and it consists of a frond end section.

Diamond-laden gravel scooped by the dredge passes through two ball mills, while recovery involves putting this valuable material through a dense medium separation process and taking the concentrate to the centralized recovery.

On average, the stone size of gem-quality diamonds recovered through this plant at U90 Block, 50 km north of Oranjemund along the Atlantic coastline is .7 carats compared to the average .3 carats for the stones extracted at Elizabeth Bay Mine.

"It is a good average stone size," she quips on the size of stones being recovered on U90.

The MDTP plant will have an annual yield of roughly 250 000, accounting for a quarter of the current annual production of a million carats of De Beers Marine Namibia, while roughly over a million carats are recovered onshore through alluvial mining by Namdeb.

Total local diamond yield in 2006 from marine (1.07 million) and land-based areas (1.02 million) equalled 2.08 million carats, surpassing projections for 2006 with 85 000 carats.

Since the future of local diamond mining lies offshore where De Beers Marine Namibia is entering new frontiers as a global leader in this sort of mining, Anca Burger's future in a sense looks gilt-edged and this go-getter could most likely broaden her horizons.