Women landowner associations in Ramu attend workshop

THREE of the four women landowner associations of the Ramu Nickel mining project recently attended a workshop on guidelines and mechanisms governing administration and disbursement of royalty funds.
The three are Inland Pipeline, Coastal Pipeline and Basamuk associations.
The fourth group, Kurumbukari, is sorting out some issues after which they will go through a similar process.
The four women associations are offshoots of their umbrella associations.
The workshop was conducted by Mineral Resources Authority’s planning and sustainability branch, in anticipation of payment of royalties to the women associations soon.
The expected share for the women follows the payment of royalties in the last quarter of 2018 where landowner umbrella associations and Madang provincial government received more than K25 million.
Of this, more than
K7 million went to the Madang government, with the balance of more than K17 million shared among the four umbrella landowner associations.
During the workshop, the women were taken through the process of submitting project proposals, project appraisal, approval and project funding disbursement, monitoring and reporting, and project closure and certification.
Gender coordinator Pentika Mambu, who delivered the workshop, told the women that this was a great opportunity for them to start up small business projects.
She cautioned them, however, that “royalty funds must be used in a transparent and accountable manner” using the guidelines and mechanisms they had been taught.
MRA managing director Jerry Garry said MRA would support landowner associations throughout all mining projects in the country.