talk on mine reopening goes on

Post Courier, 6.5.2013

THE Joint Panguna Negotiations Committee which is responsible for preparing all parties for the review and renegotiation of the Bougainville Copper Agreement (BCA) held its second meeting in Buka last week. This committee is made up of representatives from the National Government, Bougainville Copper Limited, Autonomous Bougainville Government and the Panguna landowners.

Before officially opening the meeting last Thursday, ABG President Chief Fr John Momis urged all the stakeholders involved to come up with decisions beneficial to all parties. Mr Momis said the reopening of the mine was very critical for Bougainville’s future and called for an amicable solution to be reached by the committee.
“We all know the reopening of the Panguna mine is critical for Bougainville’s planning, development and establishment of a new Bougainville in accordance with important principles that uphold the dignity of a human person, rule of law, democratisation and human participation in process of development and governance,” Mr Momis said.

“Bougainville of course has suffered immensely as a result of the Bougainville crisis. (But) This is not the time to blame one another. It is an important moment in the history of Bougainville, PNG and Australia, Australasia for us to redeem ourselves.

“All of us need to redeem ourselves because we have a lot of people suffering as a consequence of the roles played by different stakeholders in the creation (and) in the development of the Bougainville crisis. Bougainvilleans themselves are not free of this blame. So as I said, it is an important moment in the history of Bougainville for us to collaborate and work together, put the past behind us and work with hope, faith, belief in the ability of mankind to address problems, especially the prevailing culture of inward looking and certain amount of exclusiveness that people have,” added Fr Momis.

Fr Momis also announced that the ABG was committed in ensuring that the reopening of the Panguna mine would be in-line with the new ABG mining law, which the President said “will take care of interests of all parties”.

Fr Momis when challenging the committee to collaboratively work together said the “ABG is keen to see these preparations proceed quickly in a way that involves all parties, National Government, Bougainville Copper Limited, landowners and of course ABG”.
“The cooperation amongst us is essential especially as you plan and as we conduct environmental and social baseline studies, social impact and the other important work that has to be done prior to negotiations being started. If we prepare well for the negotiations, and the preparations must start now, and I guess it has already started, then the negotiations will definitely take off on the right footing.”
The President added that he would like to see these negotiations starting to take place sometimes towards the end of this year so that people would psychologically feel that things were moving and that they were truly on the road to liberation and pathway to achieving their aspirations.

The National Government team was led by the Secretary of the Department of Mineral Policy and GeoHazards Management Shadrach Himata while BCL Country Manager Paul Coleman and some of his officers also attended the meeting.