THE K92 Mining Inc in Eastern Highlands continues to support the Papua New Guinea Government efforts to fight the Covid-19 pandemic as a company and through the PNG Chamber of Mines and Petroleum, chief executive officer John Lewins says.
“We have provided resources, including secondment of personnel to the office of the emergency controller, and will continue to provide funding and resources to local level and provincial governments, and our communities to assist in dealing with the pandemic,” he said.
“Through the chamber, we offered our assistance to the Government for the roll out of vaccinations to those people in our region and we seek to ensure that all of our employees and contractors who wish to be vaccinated are provided with the opportunity to do so.
“This is a challenging time for our industry, but more concerning for the people of PNG.
“We believe that K92 Mining must play its part in helping the Government to combat this pandemic and overcome the many challenges it poses.”
Lewins said the miner would do its part by continuing to provide direct assistance and work hard to ensure its operations continued, thereby providing jobs and incomes for its employees and contractors and their families and importantly contributing to the State through the payment of taxes, royalties, levies and duties.
“Our team of employees and contractors have been outstanding during this challenging period and it is only through their hard work and support that we have been able to maintain operations at the level we have.”
Lewins also noted that the company reopened its office in Kainantu which was broken into earlier this year due to a tribal fight. “While this had nothing to do with K92, we closed our offices in Kainantu (as many businesses did) during the period of fighting to ensure the safety of our personnel,” he said.
“The office is leased and I believe that there was some damage done to the office and a number of other businesses, however it was not major and we have re-opened the office.”
Lewins added that the protocols that the company had in place had ensured that the site remained Covid-free and the company was able to ramp up operations and projects over the last few weeks.
The National / Pacific Mining Watch