Gold mine to work with govt for economic improvement

National

LIHIR Gold Ltd is ready to work with the Government to help make it economically prosperous.
This is according to the mine’s chief operating officer Craig Jones, during a dinner with the prime minister on his visit to New Ireland.
Jones said the mine understood the challenges the country faced.
“We stand committed to work in partnership with all tiers of Government to achieve this vision based on principles of transparency, good governance and accountability,” he said.
“We look forward to meeting the prime minister and resources ministers in January with other key industry representatives to discuss resource legislations.”
Jones said the mine had vision “0-1-20” which focused on contributing to the mine’s operations and to the economy of the country.
“Zero is for zero fatalities, which reflects our core value for safety of our people.
“One is for producing one million ounces of gold each year.
“20 is to continue to do this for more than 20 years, continuing our contribution to PNG.”
He said over the past few years the mine had been moving one step closer to achieving those goals.
“We maintained a large operation where we safely milled 14mt of ore and produced 933kos of gold.
“These are all because of the hard work of our workforce of over 5,000 people, with the vast majority of them Papua New Guineans.”
Prime Minister James Marape said the Government would be holding discussions with mining companies over legislations as early as next month.