Ramu nickle mine deal expired and operating illegally, says Yama

MADANG Governor Peter Yama says the Ramu nickel mine is illegally operating because there is no current mining contract agreement in place after it expired in Nov.
He said this yesterday after the signing of a revised compensation agreement between landowners of project impact areas and Ramu NiCo Management (MCC).
Yama said Wednesday’s signing was illegal because the head agreement, the mining contract agreement, was yet to be reviewed and signed. “We are still working on our position papers for the review, so how can they go ahead and sign that compensation agreement?” Yama said.
He said stakeholders like the Madang government and national government, including districts and local level governments, were not informed.
Yama said they should know how the revised compensation rates were calculated.
“We don’t have a mine right now because there is no mining contract agreement because it has expired. Ramu Nickel is illegally operating as we speak.”
Landowners of the mine’s project impact areas and MCC signed the revised compensation agreement on Wednesday.
Mine community affairs manager, Martin Paining, said the original agreement signed in 2000 was done in a rush and benefits to landowners were not captured well.
The agreement was done between Highlands Pacific and landowners before Ramu NiCo Management took over as developer of the Kurumbukari mine. Paining said more time and effort was put into revisiting the agreement and make changes according to landowners’ views, until the final revised agreement was put together.
Vice-president of Ramu NiCo Management Wang Baowen congratulated the four landowner association chairmen and their executives for successfully negotiating a very good compensation package for their people.
Wang said the revised compensation package agreement was a huge improvement on the previous one.
“The company used to spend K600,000 annually in annual compensation payment in the old agreement,” he said.
“However, in this revised agreement, the annual land use compensation payment will be more than K1.3 million.
“This is very good for the project landowners.”
Wang said the agreement included customer Index price (CPI) adjustments and the latest valuer-general land rates.