Ok Tedi project is

PACIFIC ROUNDUP: THE ECONOMY, THE GAMES - AND A NEW DIPLOMAT

Ok Tedi project is good news for locals

“Whether or not the Ok Tedi

gold/copper mining project will

brighten its promoters’ and

the Papua New Guinea Govern ment’s recent gloomy pasts will very much depend on there being no further delays in the building schedule and on the price of gold in the three years from July 1984.”

So writes Professor Richard Jackson of the University of Papua New Guinea in a Sydney newspaper.

Professor Jackson was one of three academics who in 1980, at the request of the PNG Govern ment, prepared a report on the probable major impacts of the project on the country’s economy, and on the people liv ing in the mining area. He re cently revisited Ok Tedi and found that while its benefits to participating companies and the government are “somewhat less attractive than they were back in 1980, the local people have done better than could reasonably have been expected three years ago.”

He lists the benefits as follows: • Twelve hundred local peo ple are employed on the project, a relatively high proportion of them in skilled and semi-skilled

jobs;

• Local business development has been encouraged, with Ok Tedi Mining Ltd (OTML) having a hand in the establishment of

companies in trucking, heavy

equipment, earth-moving, gravel

mining, timber milling, and

accommodation; • Most impressive of all, ac cording to Professor Jackson, has been OTML’s organisation of vegetable production and mar keting in the project area. He writes: This year, vegetables worth $500,000 will be bought by the pro ject from local suppliers who, with one exception, had previously almost no source of cash income.

The exception, the people of Ok sapmin, previously sold one tonne of vegetables a week to the north coast towns of Wewak and Vanimo. Today that figure has increased 10-fold. All

produce is collected and flown into Tabubil by light aircraft which be long to Cloudlands Aviation De velopments, 40 per cent of which is owned by local, village-based business groups.

Overall, with wages from project employment, compensation for land development, land rental payments, investment income, vegetable sales, timber sales, and income from other employment it can be estimated that in 1983 the Ok Tedi project will have added a minimum of $250 to the per capita income of the people of the area. While villagers living in the immediate vicinity of the mine will have done very much better than this average, in general the spread of this

new income will have been reason ably wide.

There are very few people at all in the Kiunga/Telefomin area who have not benefited financially from the project.

When one considers that the only previous sources of income were from growing rubber (tapping of which has now virtually ceased) and migration, which together did not add up to a per capita income of more than $5O a year, this improvement is, clearly, quite dramatic.

There are still many things to be wary of in the Ok Tedi project environmental issues remain very much alive, the business develop ment program has yet to mature, training programs have yet to be tested things may still go very sour locally. The whole project’s profitability remains in the balance, but generally, it is not going badly, particularly so as far as local interests are concerned.