MRA: Naru can disband team

 By GABRIEL LAHOC

MOROBE Governor Kelly Naru has the power to disband the Hidden Valley mine agreement review team and invalidate its report, Mineral Resources Authority acting managing director Philip Samar said yesterday.

Naru’s made a public announcement to disband the mine memorandum of agreement review team over mine royalty payments. 

Samar said  the MRA recognised that the governor had the power to do so and meetings had been deferred. 

“The MoA review meeting was scheduled for this week but given the disbanding of the Morobe provincial government’s MoA review team, I have to defer this meeting until we are advised of the new appointments by the Morobe government,” he said.

“We are aware of the announcement by Naru to disband the team for Morobe provincial government. It is within the governor’s powers to do what he did and we respect that,” Samar said.

 “We hope that the Morobe provincial government can reorganise the MoA review process without further delays,” he said.

Samar said, while waiting for that, they were consulting the other party to the agreement, especially the Nakuwi Landowners’ Association, the representative body of the three Hidden Valley landowner tribes of Nauti, Winima and Kuembu. 

“This is to establish agreement between us on a number of landowner issues raised in their position paper. This is to ensure that other parties at the table are not inconvenienced in any way and that their issues were being addressed pending the return of the MoA review team for Morobe,” Samar said.

Apart from the Nakuwi Landowners’ Association, the other signatories to the Hidden Valley mine agreement are the Morobe provincial government, Mineral Resources Authority and developer Morobe Mining Joint Venture.

Naru announced two weeks ago in Wau that he would disband the review team because the provincial government was not represented “as the face, mouth and ear of the people of Morobe”.