ticking along at hume

Friday August 3, 2012

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Hume seeks foreign workers Save
Aug. 3, 2012, midnight



THE Hume Coal Project is looking overseas for an underground planning engineer, offering an Australian working visa for the successful applicant in its advertisement.


The job will be to direct the planning for underground mining in the coal lease, which stretches from Belanglo State Forest, under Sutton Forest to the village of Exeter.

With Hume unable to find the right person in Australia, the latest recruitment advertisement has been tailored for overseas applicants, offering a working permit known as a business sponsorship, subclass 457 visa, to work at the Moss Vale office.

"An employer-sponsored 457 work visa will be offered to the successful candidate along with a competitive remuneration package, nice offices and a fantastic team," it says.

Overseas recruitment is at odds with the miner's stated local employment objective, but Hume Coal project manager Tim Rheinberger said the company had been unable to fill two jobs - the engineer and a geologist - after advertising in Australia.

"Unfortunately we haven't been able to fill the positions to date and as a result have broadened our search to fill the mine planning engineer role by advertising overseas," he said.

"As the Hume Coal project enters the second year of exploration and towards the pre-feasibility stage, we will be looking to increase and expand the level of technical skills we have in-house.

"We are committed to employing local people and utilising local businesses wherever possible, however in this case we haven't been able to fill the positions locally."

Hume Coal is a joint venture between Korean steel maker POSCO and the Australian-based Cockatoo Coal. Last month Hume announced that it would relinquish some of its lease area after preliminary studies found it would be "uneconomic" to mine there.

But this does not appear to have had an impact on the amount of coal the company believes it can extract from the area, with Cockatoo recently informing the stock exchange that it had revised the estimated size of the coal resource up by 58 per cent to 324 million tonnes.

The miner is battling a well-resourced campaign from landowners against the mine, with opponents enjoying the support of NSW MP Pru Goward.

Hume's plans are likely to be a test for the NSW government's proposed aquifer interference policy.

Opponents of the mine, including Ms Goward, argue the underground water bodies in the area would be damaged by mining, as the coal seam is located below the aquifer.

Hume Coal will conduct a series of site visits and seminars next month to allow residents to see how the drill sites function. (See www.humecoal.com.au for more information).
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"We often get questions at community events about how we obtain a sample. Inviting the community to a drill rig site, then inspecting a rehabilitated area will help explain the process," Mr Rheinberger said.

- Ben Langford (Illawarra Mercury)