Clan leader welcomes company’s establishment

By BRADLEY MARIORI
A landowner and clan leader in Wau, Bulolo, Morobe, has welcomed the newly-created Morobe provincial government’s business subsidiary, Morobe Alluvial Mining Ltd (MAML), to develop his clan’s customary land in small scale mining.
Joel Yanduk, from Wandumi village on the outskirts of Wau town, offered his and his clan’s customary land to the company to help them develop it, saying they had been in limbo for so many years as to how they could mine their land.
Yanduk with his son, Gabriel and two other clan spokesmen, travelled to Lae last Friday and met with MAML chief executive officer Brigitta Pondros.
Yanduk said their clan’s land at Wandumi had a history of mining.
The land had two old dredgers from the 1930s which had been used by the Bulolo Gold Dredging (BGD) company.
Yanduk said the foreign developers then left with gold bullion worth millions of kina from both the alluvial and bench deposits of their land.
“We know that there is gold in our land but how to go about mining it has been a major problem for us for so many years,” Yanduk said.
“We are very happy that our own provincial government has created a company to help small scale miners like us on our own land.”
He urged the company to make every effort in the process of applying for a mining lease for them so could start mining their land.
Pondros said the company was created by the Morobe government to help the people.
She said the company was created to help small scale mine lease holders and landowners in Morobe to go into small scale mining.