Recommendations attended to, firm tells landowners

 THE Government has assured landowners of the Lihir gold mine that recommendations of a recent environment audit are being attended to.

This followed queries by resource owners on Lihir Island through their Londolovit Sagomana Association on what was happening to the findings and recommendations of the State-sanctioned Londolovit River environment audit report conducted by Australia’s Moroka Pty Ltd last August.

The audit was conducted following concerns by the landowners over the extraction of water from the Londolovit River by the operator of the gold mine, Lihir Gold Ltd for its operation.

Conservation and Environment Protection Authority managing director Gunther Joku confirmed in a statement that there were four recommendations from the audit.

“Recommendations 1 to 3 are regulatory in nature and as per the Environmental Improvement Plan Provision of Section 75 of the Environment Act 2000, the company has already submitted its EIP to the Director of Environment,” he said.

He said because the first three recommendations were regulatory in nature, the CEPA would oversee their implementation. 

Joku said the implementation of the EIP for some of these recommendations had already commenced “with others to commence shortly”.