Industry employes 50,000 people, train thousands: Chambers

THE country’s resources industry directly and indirectly employs more than 50,000 people, according to the PNG Chamber of Mines and Petroleum.
Manager for public relations and communications Mackhenly Kaiok said many of these jobs existed as a direct result of apprenticeship, or other graduate and technical training programmes offered by resource companies.
Kaiok was speaking during the 2019 National Apprentice and Trade Test Candidate of the Year Awards ceremony held on Friday in Port Moresby.
The chamber was the major sponsor of two of the top awards during the event.
“At Ok Tedi, over 1,070 PNG citizens have received training and graduated as trades persons since operations began in the 1980s with a further 545 graduating from its graduate development programme and 1,227 participants receiving training in the other qualifications, under the company’s preferred area development programme,” Kaiok said.
“At Porgera, the mine has trained over 750 employees since 2003 while Total, the lead operator of the Papua LNG project, has so far spent K730,000 to train 50 people from its project impact areas on maritime training and mechanical fitting, and building and construction training at the Port Moresby Technical College.
“The project is also further investing K11million on technical training for over 300 youths from the project area and Gulf province before the Papua LNG construction.
“The Ramu NiCo mine has also invested over K1 million to train more than 350 apprentices and trades men and women since 2011.
“ExxonMobil PNG has recruited more than 200 Papua New Guineans through its operations and maintenance programme and also delivered over 89,000 hours of training to its workforce over the past year,” he said.
“Era Resources, the owners of the Yandera Copper project, have spent over K680,000 on staff training since 2014.
“Oil Search has also trained more than 200 apprentices since the 1990s with more than 58 per cent of those trained still with the company and have progressed to leadership positions in the company.
“Oil Search also runs a graduate development programme and offer scholarships to cover all aspects of its business,” he said.