Not sure if anyone read the article below in the Australian on the 15th of this month. This is why working with the locals is vital.
I come back to my original question which still hasn’t been answered by MW or IB who is on the board of KCM and who is on the ground in Nigeria building relationships. It’s all well and good having millions of tonnes of ore but if we don’t have relationships on the ground we are on the back foot.
Traditional owners join with Downer in Century mine deal
SUE NEALES
12:00AM SEPTEMBER 15, 2018
A trailblazing model of mining in which traditional owners tap the contracting know-how of a mining services giant is under way in northwest Queensland.
The local Waanyi people have formed a joint venture with Downer to develop, expand and work Century zinc mine, 250km north of Mount Isa, for New Century Resources.
The deal will see Waanyi people, most living at nearby Doomadgee, Mornington Island or Mount Isa, benefiting from salaried jobs as fitters, mechanics and machinery operators offered by their own contracting joint venture, and from an equal share in profits as contract mining service partner for work performed for NCR.
In the past, most development agreements between mining companies and traditional owners have, in effect, been compensation deals, with money handed over in return for access.
The Century site at Lawn Hill, once the world’s largest zinc open-cut mine, was officially reopened yesterday by mining minnow NCR, two years after it was mothballed by MMG because of depleted reserves and low prices.
The first phase of the reopening will see 500,000 tonnes of zinc concentrate pellets produced annually from “mining” vast high-value waste tailing reserves, before the original Pasminco Century open-cut mine is expanded with Waanyi approval and, now, actual mining involvement.
Waanyi traditional owner and elder Henry Aplin said yesterday the joint venture with Downer gave his people much greater benefits in terms of training, jobs and profit-sharing.
It will also ensure Waanyi people are on site — the aim is for more than 20 per cent of New Century’s 250 employees to be local Aboriginal workers — and are closely involved in decisions about expanding the pit closer to culturally sensitive Magazine Hill.
“It will benefit Waanyi communities like Doomadgee much more; we will be part of the open-cut mining as it happens and have jobs, more benefits and more say,” said Mr Aplin yesterday as he sat on the edge of the 800m-deep pit.
Under the original agreement signed by Pasminco and four indigenous groups in 1997 — before a successful Waanyi native title determination over the Riversleigh-Lawn Hill area — about $4 million a year was paid in land compensation.
But many of the other promised benefits, such as jobs, National Park ranger programs and training failed to materialise as the Century mine changed hands four times in 15 years.
National Aboriginal leader Warren Mundine, the independent chairman of the board governing the Downer-Waanyi joint venture, is hopeful the latest model will deliver benefits for all and become the blueprint for business in Australia’s north.
“This idea for a commercial joint venture model was born four years ago when mines across Australia were closing because of low commodity prices, and jobs were going,” Mr Mundine said yesterday. “I didn’t want our people, despite having skills and knowledge, to go back to the dole queues.
“This is a partnership model and case study we can roll out across other mines. It’s a straight commercial arrangement that’s about real jobs and real work, where traditional native title holders get two bites of the cherry in terms of benefits because their salaries go back into their communities and they share in the profits for contract work done at a mine that is in their land.”
New Century Resources chief executive Pat Walta said the mining services joint venture was a first for the Australian mining industry.
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