Bilimoia village, eastern Highlands. Credit: Damian Baker

By Damian Baker:

theangle.org’s Damian Baker previews his next assignment in the eastern Highlands town of Kainantu.

I’m here in the remote eastern Highlands town of Kainantu to document the effects on a local community as Barrick Gold starts the early stages of reopening a gold mine.

Volatile clan and tribal fighting, high-grade ore-bearing gold at the headwaters of a major river system all combine to make the Barrick efforts a volatile mix. Indeed the environment, the culture and indeed the mine itself are all at risk if management practices are not improved for in 2004 a landslide during early mine preparatory work killed ten people and the mine has had closures as a result of landowner unrest.

In November 2004 a landowner group of the Kainantu gold mine threatened to stop the mine unless the operator honoured the commitments it had agreed to with the villagers. The Bilimoia Landowner Association said the mine’s then operator – Highlands Pacific Limited – had “…failed to meet many of its obligations to the landowner group.”

The association’s executive director Bernard Kelonti said unless the company honour these obligations, they would again shut down the mine. One claim entered by a landowners’ group against Barrick has recently been reported in the PNG Courier newspaper as being allowed by the mining giant.

However many other obligations including water and power to villages are still claimed to have been unmet by Barrick according to landowners.

Following torrential rains in Dec 2008 10 people were killed in a landslide which happened at the Kora exploration camp of the Barrick mine. Australian Dog Team searchers were used in the rescue operations.

However the money paid to the families who lost loved ones was inadequate say villagers with family members claiming a 10,000 kina ($A4,199) compensation claim was hardly enough to pay for the coffins.

Already prostitution, drugs, illegal guns and alcohol related problems are indicators of early signs of irreversible damage to the local community and culture. It’s a bad start but with gold at over $1000 an ounce there will be no letting up in efforts to extract the precious resource.

Tags: barrick gold, Damian Baker, kainantu, kelonti, kora