Photo: James Donald Vice Minister for Mining and Border Development and MP for North Fly - Credit: The Voice of Hon.James Donald, MP Facebook Page
North Fly MP and Vice Minister for Mining and Border Development James Donald stated that heavy investments in agriculture is the way forward for the district if it has to sustain itself after the OK Tedi mine’s closure. This was his response following the recent assertion and announcement of Ok Tedi Mining Ltd to increase the mine’s existence past 2032.
“We have to use both the direct and indirect advantages from Ok Tedi, such as investments proceeds from Mineral Resources Development Company (MRDC), Mineral Resources Ok Tedi No 2 Ltd (MROT2), PNG Sustainable Development Program (SDP) and others, to attend to our development desires, and agriculture needs to be our primary recognition,” stated donald.
According to OTML Chief Executive and Managing Director Musje Werror, the quantity of useful resource and minerals in the ground should last beyond the 2040s, or even 2050s and consequently the business enterprise has changed into looking at extending the mine’s existence.
In mild of this, Donald, is of the view that his people have to now move away from the habit of dependency and easy handout mentality and start thinking afresh about setting out into the agricultural sector to turn out to be effective economically and socially.
“The 10 years before Ok Tedi Mine’s closure by 2032 isn't a comic story for North Fly and Western Province as a whole. The question is how organized or ready are we, to stand on our own whilst the sole financial powerhouse in our District or Western Province ceases operation in 10 years’ time? "My dream is for North Fly District to move towards agriculture. We will invest closely on mechanized farming by way of bringing in appropriate investment to farm cattle, goats, chicken, and grow diversely in order to develop our economy so that we must be able to produce massive quantities" he said.
Donald added that “We should now be smart in our questioning and aggressively push beyond the limits of our aspirations otherwise it would be a tragedy. To do this, agriculture is the way forward for us. There is one impediment that holds us again is land issues in which an awful lot of the land are standard and so we have been unable to do huge scale farms, and so forth.
“I actually have tasked the District Administration (North Fly) to start consultations with landowners. We can cross into agreements not to buy their land but have an expert to engage landowners to be part of the arrangement so we can assist them acquire their titles. We need large landmass of greater than 500 – 1 million hectares to realize our capability in agriculture,” stated North Fly MP and Vice Minister for Mining and Border Development.
“At the same time, we must open up and entice investments in different key areas in our District and Province. Investments in building our human resources, enhancing and rebuilding our public institutions, creating Special Economic Zones, Free Trade Zones, constructing key permitting infrastructures together with roads and highways connecting the whole province.
“Also, all Western Province leaders must unite and push hard for separate standalone Western LNG starting with the P’nyang Gas undertaking aggregating all the stranded fields by building a processing and load out facility in Daru. The benefit should be shared similarly across the complete province as we have done with the Ok Tedi Mining. This is the second one largest economy to hold Western province if we are not cautious.” This ought to be our priorities now and we ought to work extraordinarily smarter to recognise these aspirations he said.
