A.D. Ibarra
-ICT
Rudy Rodriguez of the Dos Republicas Coal Mining Partnership informed The News Gram of the fact that their job fair to hire drivers for their many heavy tractors and other advanced machinery was held on Monday, December 8th from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM.
Hundreds of interested applicants waited in line for hours to get into the trade center, some arriving as early as 4:00 AM to have the opportunity to be interviewed.
"It's overwhelming, I think we have a full house inside and a full house outside, more people than we anticipated, but we'll be here until 8 o'clock tonight," said Rodriguez, "We've got good jobs with competitive wages, benefits. Hopefully we can get some of these people hired by the first quarter of 2015."
Mr. Rodriguez added that they are making the preparations at the mine to be able to ship out that first scheduled load of coal on June 1st, the first of what will be about 3 million tons of the sub-bitumnous coal, the best of its kind in the state of Texas.
He also stated that dirt is beginning to be moved in order to begin construction on the $10 million office complex/warehouse facility which will begin this month and the proverbial ball begins to roll forward with this project despite the lack of the highly contested flood plain permit which was denied back in October.
The turnout shows the level of interest in these jobs by local citizens as tables were set up all around the conference room which was filled to its capacity and as administrators interviewed prospective employees about eight at a time.
Peter A. Nielsen and his staff were busy conducting these initial interviews and those 200 or so individuals who will receive a secondary, more formal interview will be advised as to when and where that will take place.
"We're very excited," concluded Rodriguez, "It's just another step as we move forward with this project, getting the people hired and begin doing good things in this community."
