NNSL (Mar 18/98) - One of the arguments against setting up a diamond-cutting and polishing facility in the North has been the lack of skilled labor.

At the prospectors conference one group presented a figure of $100,000 and 18 months to three years to train a diamond cutter.

Filip Zimerman disagrees outright. "According to my book and the thousands of cutters overseas, that's a bunch of hogwash."

Zimerman was trained by a large diamond- cutting firm in Israel in 1965. The course cost him just $500, and after six months, he said, he was making just as much as somebody who was working for 30 years.

"It took me three months to make decent living and actually six months to make a wonderful living," said Zimerman, who is nearly 50 years old.

Now a diamond dealer, Zimerman has close connections with Israe because that's where he does all his buying for his store.

"The store presently is the largest manufacturing diamond store in Manitoba and we do very nice volume. But we have a hands-on approach. Everything is done here and in the store in as far as diamond cutting I have expanded my horizons to have connections in New York and I'm very close friends with the Diamonds Dealers Club," he said.

"Diamond cutting is not really difficult. I think anybody can be trained in a matter of three to six months, but marketing is the most important thing. If you take a product and you change hands many times, there are costs to it. We know how to take it from first-hand and sell it to almost last-hand."

To come North, Zimmy Diamonds is after a small percentage of the total diamond sales, if the North can secure some of the goods from the diamond producers.

"There has to be some peaceful coexistence with the producer and you people," he said.