ALLUVIAL mining is a sleeping giant that has captured Mineral Resource Authority’s (MRA) attention, managing director Philip Samar said.
He said as the Government mining regulator, MRA would design best practices to protect the sector, he said.
Samar said the goal was to encourage and promote alluvial sector to meet Governments’ medium and long term development plans because the bigger mining companies could not deliver alone.
“By 2020-30, the alluvial mining sector would double the revenue for the Government coffers,” Samar said.
The participants of the alluvial mining convention in Lae travelled as far Maprik (East Sepik) and Oksapmin (Sandaun), Madang, Pogera, Port Moresby, including other parts of the country that are involved in alluvial activities.
“MRA is taking interest in the sector 40 years later, but it is not too late … we have started elsewhere, and here we are today together to set the footpath to progress,” Samar said.
Samar highlighted the challenges how MRA would make happen (applications), how to reach the inaccessible … the blue print of conversion method tested by Niugini Gold Mining will be used to work in collaboration with tenement lease holders.
“What MRA was unable to do during the past 20 years can now be done in two years, based on ideas and information shared in the conference among regulators, miners, buyers and interested public and private sectors”.
“It’s critical for MRA and those involving in the sector to ask: where do we go from here, what are the mechanisms available for us to get there,” Samar said.
Samar praised companies and agencies for their partnership in support to the sector’s second convention held in Lae on Tuesday and Wednesday with the theme “Panning for Alluvial Prosperity. PMW/The National
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