Lihir Mining Area Landowners Association (LMALA) is calling for a review of the Integrated Benefits Package (IBP).
This comes after the Government and the developer of the Lihir Gold Mine had not done a review of the IBP since 2007.
The IBP is part of the Lihir Agreements that were signed in 1995 to ensure the opening of the Lihir Gold Mine, the IBP is a compensation Agreement and Chairman of LMALA James Laketan with his executive committee were in Port Moresby to persuade the Government to bring back the review of the IBP.
“Our issue and concerns refer to compensation for our landowners, as landowners we deserve the compensation because of the effects of the mine. This is under Section 154 (1) and 154 (6) of the Mining Act, where it states that compensation must be paid to all mine affected landowners and this also applies in Section 156 (6) of the Mining Act that states those in the periphery of the mine area as well must be included,” Laketan said
Laketan says there is a five-year cycle for review, and there hasn’t been a review for IBP since 2007.
He added they were eager for a review in 2017, in the hopes that it would lead to them finally knowing the value of the IBP, and going forward the figures would help them, work on a sustainable development plan.
This sadly didn’t happen, instead there was a new agreement put forth by the developer and the Government in 2017.
“In 2017 when the developer and the Mineral Resource Authority wanted to start the review process on the Lihir Agreements, but there wasn’t consideration given to have the IBP in the review, instead they put in a new agreement called the Compensation Relocation Agreement (CRA) a totally new agreement, this left LMALA and the Local Level Government, the signatories to the IBP to Pull out because IBP wasn’t in the review.
“We want the Government and the developer to get the IPB Review back on the table so that the outstanding benefits and obligations from the IPB can be given to the people, the review is outstanding, and there is no positive feedback after we had put in our query for a review of IBP,” Laketan said.
LMALA also mentioned in a Media release that they as landowners never gave their free and prior informed consent to have CRA as their new compensation agreement. refereeing to the fact that their push to have IBP as the only Compensation Agreement has fallen on deaf ears, with the Government and developer proceeding with the CRA.
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