after mining

Quelle :http://ramumine.wordpress.com/2013/07/


Juliy 29.2013 · 4:40 pm

Sustainable businesses possible to outlast mining

A number of Pacific Islanders associated with the mining industry are attending a workshop at the University of Queensland on how local communities based around major mines can maximise their own business opportunities.

ABC Radio Australia

Presenter: Sean Dorney
Speaker: Ernesto Sirolli, Sirolli Institute, Lesley Bennett, Chamber of Mines and Petroleum, Papua New Guinea; Krista Tatapu, Ministry of Mines and Energy, Solomon Islands;

DORNEY: Twenty international visitors have been brought to Brisbane by the International Mining for Development Centre and amongst those running sessions is Ernesto Sirolli whose Sirolli Institute provides support for local communities especially in developing countries wanting to start their own businesses.

SIROLLI: Because they’re starting anew they don’t have to repeat the mistakes of the past. And in the past the relationship between mining companies and communities has been either patronising or paternalistic.

DORNEY: He says the idea is to encourage the creation of a cash generating economy that will outlast the mine.

SIROLLI: The mining companies will go to a community and try to be a good public citizen. They would give some money towards the creation of a school or a hospital. The problem is that when the mine shuts down, the local people don’t have the money to employ the teachers and the doctors. And we have seen in the last 50 years in the work in Africa that for many international aid organisations what happens when the mine goes away is that those infrastructures crumble because there is no local capacity to employ the teachers and the doctors. We are trying instead to develop a concept called the parallel economy where the mining company helps the community develop all sorts of businesses, not only businesses that pertain to the mine necessarily but businesses that are there to enhance the capacity of the community to generate wealth. It could be from restaurants to hairdressers, all the way to ethanol plants and all the way to farming operations. The idea is that when the mine goes away they leave behind hundreds of new businesses. Maybe because the mine goes away some of these businesses will have to relocate but if you teach local people how to start and run successful businesses you have taught them a portable skill so they can take it with them.

DORNEY: Lesley Bennett from Papua New Guinea’s Chamber of Mines and Petroleum says the course has many lessons for mining developments in PNG.

BENNETT: Learning how companies can better earn their social licences to operate in the communities that they’re working in. And it’s also about finding a way where everyone is benefitting.

DORNEY: Ernesto Sirolli says his Institute provides the financial advice and support to get the local entrepreneurs started.

SIROLLI: Free, caring, confidential and competent. And as soon as you provide that kind of service then you discover that all these entrepreneurs appear.

DORNEY: Krista Tatapu from the Solomon Islands Ministry of Mines and Energy says it makes sense.

TATAPU: So that communities in various mining areas or concessions are helped. You know, how they may be able to sustain themselves after a company has left.

SIROLLI: Even in the smallest rural communities the moment you shut up and listen to local people and you offer a confidential service then the entrepreneurs appear. There is never a scarcity of ideas. We have discovered that there is no geography to passion and there is no geography to intelligence. But it requires a different social infrastructure for entrepreneurs to appear.

DORNEY: Ernesto Sirolli says it is simply about facilitating the natural enterprise of the local people.