Thousands of former BCL employees are holding their breath with the hope that the proposed deal by Dubai royal house to buy the closed mine will succeed. Over 6000 of BCL group employees were rendered jobless in October last year when Government – BCL’s sole shareholder – moved to put the mine under provisional liquidation citing the unprofitability of operations. Though this was widely criticised with Government accused of being insensitive, she pointed to the piling debts and growing list of creditors who were demanding their dues. At the time the mine owed suppliers and banks over P1 billion. In particular Government was under pressure to pay Russian miners Norilsk P3 billion for the sale of their African interests which included a stake in Nkomati mine in South Africa and the whole operations of Tati Nickel in Francistown. Though recently BCL liquidator Nigel Dixon-Warren had revealed that all the BCL Enterprises were fatally insolvent and was going to recommend final liquidation to the court, on Tuesday his lawyers confirmed that a potential buyer of BCL had made an offer and hence they sought a delay of provisional liquidation. The High Court agreed to delay the provisional liquidation, paving the way…