PNG: Bougainville government plans to resume mining activities

Peterson Tseraha

BUKA (PNG Post-Courier / Pacific Media Watch): The Autonomous Bougainville Government has made history by moving a motion on the most sensitive issue on Bougainville mining exploration.

The motion is a positive step since its instalment in 2005 as a young government.

On Thursday, before a packed House of Representatives in Buka, Melchior Dare, Member for Eivo Torau Constituency and chairman of Central Bougainville Parliamentary Committee, presented a motion from the floor to introduce a Bougainville mining policy to start exploration on Bougainville - "a right that every Bougainvillean has been waiting for and have fought the Bougainville crisis for".

The motion calls on the Autonomous Bougainville Government to:

* Create a Bougainville mining oil and gas policy that should protect the interests of the Autonomous Bougainville Government, landowner rights and investors;

* Grant the local resource owners’ company a licence to do mineral, oil and gas exploration on its own land, and;

* Consider the draft mining oil and gas policy during 2012.

In a rousing 45-minute presentation to the House, Dare explained that under section 4(b) of the Bougainville Peace Agreement, "autonomy" is intended to enable Bougainville to determine its own solutions to its own problems and needs and now was the time to act to resume mining exploration on the island.

He told the House that while the move to resume exploration on Bougainville was a grassroots movement driven by the resource owners themselves, the government had a duty to fulfill its function as the regulator of mining on Bougainville.

He stated that the ownership of mineral resources is usually claimed by the State or the Crown, and in the case of Bougainville the customary traditional landowners own the minerals which is protected by section 23 of the Bougainville constitution and recognised by Article 26 of the United Nations Convention.