Mining watchdog worried by state of emergency in Porgera

Transcript

A mining watchdog says it is worried by a state of emergency in place in the Papua New Guinea mining town of Porgera, following previous incidents of violence.

The police says the Government approved the state of emergency due to a rise in law and order problems and illegal mining at the Barrick Gold-owned mine.

MiningWatch Canada's Asia/Pacific spokesperson, Catherine Coumans, says a previous state of emergency in the area in 2009 sparked violence and the burning down of people's homes.

CATHERINE COUMANS:It's going to be very hard to know exactly how this is going to play out. We are going to see what actually happens but the last time that this happened there had been very strong messages sent by people associated with the mine, both the local mine manager aswell as a visit that came from headquarters in Canada just before the state of emergency, the operation Ipili in 2009 was launched, in which there were a lot of complaints by the mine manager and the executive that came from Canada about the fact that they needed more police forces up in the area so there was a direct request security issues around the mine and of course ultimately it is the state that sends these forces but you know, there was a very direct link between requests to have more security around the mine site and also very positive and welcoming statements made once security forces moved in. So it is very troubling to know that these forces are moving in and it will be very interesting to see what actually happens in Porgera during these days and I am very happy to know that there are media out there paying attention to this because that may be somewhat protective.

AMELIA LANGFORD:Let's focus on the illegal mining. What drives people to go onto the mine and illegally scavenge or mine? And what needs to be done?

CC: So what people need to understand is that this mine has taken over all of the land, all of the available land that people used to use for their gardens, and what they call their gardens is their agricultural plots, this is the last area in PNG that saw white people. It is still very agricultural, it is extremely rural, it's extremely remote, the road that goes to the mine ends at the mine, there is nothing after that and people lived off the land and they lived off the water they could get from the river and as the mine has expanded and not just the mine but its massive waste dumps  - these huge huge waste dumps that just wind through all the valleys around the mine, people are getting squeezed sort of up the mountains and onto these little islands with waste all around them and where they are being squeeze up the mountains they are in a area where they can't even grow most of their crops anymore because it is just too cold so people have lost their traditional way of living and maintaining themselves and what has happened to replace that is that women will go into the waste dumps and pan for gold literally in the waste of the mine because that waste still contains enough gold that it is worth their while and young men will go into the pit and they will actually try to get, you know, scavenge rocks from the pits that have gold in them and then they will take those rocks out and then they will process that with mercury and this is also a huge problem up at the mine site with people having mercury contamination, women children and men who quite visibly have mercury contamination so this is an incredibly unhealthy and dangerous situation and this has been going on for years and the company has put up a fence but that really is not changing the reality of people needing to find a way to support themselves and what people have been calling for for many many years is to be resettled.

It is really hard to imagine how gruesome this place is. It is like a hellish place. There is waste everywhere, there's constant operation of the mine, there's blasting, houses are being shaken by the blasting, the waste is corroding away the sides of the mountains and so there's actually whole houses and a whole school that disappeared into the waste. It's just not a place that is fit for human habitation and people have been extremely clear that they want to be moved. URS, a major international consulting firm, actually polled people and issued a report that had a very strong statement upfront that said that yes in their polls it was very clear that the majority of people wanted to be moved, wanted to be relocated. and at that point, Barrick had just taken over the mine as the report was issued, I think in 2007, and Barrick said that they were going to relocate everyone, which is the normal thing to do - you don't have people living right up against the pit, right up against the waste, but then the understanding is that they decided against it because of the costs that were going to be incurred in doing this so everyone is just staying put and they only moved people on a sort of 'need to be' basis. In other words, if their house is about to fall into the waste dump, they call that geotechnically unstable areas they will move people or if they want to expand the mine they will move little patches of people, but in all my travels up there and all the people I've talked to everyone says 'these are clans - these are people who want to be moved as a whole and not piecemeal'.

MiningWatch Canada's Catherine Coumans.

Barrick says it has an ongoing resettlement programme and says crime and lawlessness is a problem throughout the district.