Ok Tedi gives scholarships

By ELLEN TIAMU
THE Ok Tedi mine is continuing to help mining students at the University of Technology in Lae with the sponsorship of three third-year students last week.
In addition, the Western-based mining company sponsors top students at the University of Papua New Guinea.
The three latest Unitech recipients are third-year students Daniel Evekone and Steven Ekeran from the Department of Mining Engineering and Eddie Kopio from Mineral Processing.
There are four final-year students in the same programme.
This is the sixth year of the Ok Tedi undergraduate sponsorship programme, with 30 students benefitting so far.
Ok Tedi mine spends on average K160,000 for eight students and since the programme’s inception has spent about K794,160.
The mine’s human resource manager, Eric Kuman, said the company believed in employee development and had so far spent US$10.2 million, making it one of the largest human resource development contributors in the country.
Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Prof Cletus Gonduan urged the students to strive to achieve excellence and not to think of themselves as second class.
“Mining in PNG is difficult and more challenging and Unitech’s mining school is one of the best in the world,” he said.
“Australia continues to recruit graduates from PNG because our mining graduates have better experience because of our geology.”
Gonduan urged the students to think first of their country and not be lured by better money offers elsewhere in the world.