Talk:Porgera Gold Mine

Porgera redirects here but it shouldn't, there needs to be an entry made on the town itself, as Porgera is also a population centre. aliasd·U·T 03:26, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

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Lethal force?
Security can use lethal force? A new one on me. You can defend yourself in PNG, like in most countries, and the castle principle applies, provided a warning shot is fired. (Note, most western countries have long dispensed with the warning shot requirement in the CP.) The refs pointed to are not objective, and are probably self research. Some greenie is doing this to all mining operation Wiki pages. There's a constant theme occurring about mine employees sexually assaulting women, from Africa to South America. Must be a cut-and-paste job, then referencing his own blogs as proof of the assertions. 203.213.61.166 (talk) 03:57, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

Yes, at the time when I wrote the initial article (as Richard the Farb), quite a number of senior security personnel were authorised to use both lethal and less lethal force - I reckon that won't have changed. One does not tote around a SIG .223 or a Mosberg shotgun loaded with buck just to impress the ladies - the weapons are real and the people wielding them are authorised to use them and I saw it in action there a number of times. Article now has numbers for people killed - what it does not have (and what is more difficult to quantify) is the much larger number of people shot, beaten, gassed (CS), clubbed with clubs, severely injured in any number of ways you can imagine. Sworn in as 'ResPol' (Reserve Police), so have powers to arrest and detain. The 'Rapids' - Rapid Squads - are not employed by the mine and in PNG function in a strange space somewhere between the police and the army. Basically, carte blanche to walk into an area of disturbance and sort it out the way they best see fit. Saw some remarkably brutal things performed by the Rapids whilst I was working there. Self-Research, yes indeed - I was an employee at the mine! An expatriate Australian in a senior position, there for four years. Plenty of people have come along since I wrote the article in the first place and added bits and pieces to it, and yes, some of it is a bit far reaching. The sexual assaults are real enough - but we are talking about the PNG highlands here too, not some nice safe Western Country. Women are pretty vulnerable in PNG, in the highlands more so. Prostitution was rife in the valley too.

The theme of mining employees sexually assaulting women in third world (more developed countries too!) is absolutely a reality. Having spent 25+ years in the mining industry working and living in a number of SEA nations, a couple of the 'stans, Tanzania and Mongolia, I completely vouch for it. Now I'm an expat Australian and when you're an expat living and working in another country there is usually a fair amount of scrutiny on you and some hefty rules against fraternization with nationals that the contractor your working for and the client will impose. Saw more than one thickhead expat shoved on a plane and booted out of the country for dallying with locals. Best bet is to hunker down, do your six weeks (or longer) then fly out to a right proper fleshpot, if that's your thing. But no such restrictions against nationals - it's their country afterall, so yeah, lots of girls - willing or not - being knobbed by lots of national employees of mining companies.

I don't do blogs or anything like that, you must be referring to another contributor.

I wrote the article because of the great disparity I saw in how a major world gold miner - Placer, and then Barrick - will conduct itself in a country with, shall we say a lesser degree of legislative oversight, than they would in the US, or Canada, or Aus. Riverine tailings disposal - man, that was just a nasty thing to do. Disparity too in wages. Using Porgera as an example, I met a twin boom jumbo operator there, Ronnie Komala, and man was he good. Top work ethic, great quality, never dropped the pace nor ever dropped a cut. If Ronnie had have been an Australian twin boom operator in Australia, he'd have been in demand, he'd have been sought after, and he'd have been pulling up around $180k in themdays AUD$. What did Ronnie make in PNG, operating a commonly seen twin boom for those days (was a Tamrock Minimatic, if I recall aright), at a high level of output and quality, experiencing the same risks and hazards that any Jumbo operator would experience anywhere else? From memory, Ronnie pulled the equivalent of $30k. Nobody - and I did ask - was ever able to explain to me how that was right in a way that made sense.

I loved PNG, I made great friends, I rarely went back to Australia on my days off, preferring instead to explore, invited to stay with the people I met at work in their towns and villages. And while the mine was pretty amazing in a technical sense, the damage it was causing socially, to the immediate (and downstream) environment, the near continuous deaths of Illegal Miners in falls, falls of ground, burials, the operations brutal lack of genuine concern and the hardening of hearts I observed in other expats in order to cope and deal with the craziness of it all - that did it for me.

So I wrote this article in mid 2007, handed in my notice shortly after and moved onto a different country for a different mining company. There have been quite a few before that and since, some good, one GREAT! (short contract alas) but most as bad as if not worse than Porgera. One smaller place, in the throes of construction when I arrived, with limited funds, a tight schedule and no room for delay managed to kill a good twenty or so of the nationals that were unskilled / semi-skilled labor on the construction. Underground, we were fine - was with a good Aussie contractor on that one that did not cut any corners - but man did the client keep bowling them over on the surface, building the plant! Asked one of the client bigwigs what he thought the core problem was at the wet mess one evening, a deeply compromised Australian, he kinda shrugged and said yeah it's shit, but they're only asians and, shrug, there's plenty of them around, we can always get plenty more and they're cheap as chips - not really a big deal.

No kidding, that's what was said. Now that's an example at the worse end of the scale, but it exists.

Article in sore need of being updated now - Porgera has been through some changes since and is in different hands nowdays. Someone with current knowledge needs to do a vast overhaul. I still keep in close touch with a good number of the PNG friends I made there and I've been back to PNG as often as I could - sadly, for a few funerals too. Would I work at Porgera again? Dunno, doubt it. But PNG, as a whole, is a wonderful place. A bit dicey in some places, but if you can speak reasonable Tok Pisin, are generous to a degree, conduct yourself with a bit of dignity, show respect and avoid bad situations (get that in any country) its a fantastic nation and does not deserve the bad reputation it has - although, if we're talking about Port Moresby, well, believe everything you've ever heard about it plus some. "A more wretched hive of scum and villainy" indeed.

When I flew out for the last time, off the Anawae helipad in one of the wonderful MIL 180's that serviced the place (what a brilliant Helo), a good number of my crew turned up at the pad gates to say farewell. I dunno who let them in to do that. It reduced me to tears, a gruff burly fellow as I like to imagine myself, weeping uncontrollably. All that flight to Mt Hagen, all the wait there for the Dash Eight to arrive, all the flight back to Cairns, I cried and cried, the other passengers carefully pretending I wasnt there. Never done that any other place before or since, most places the final flight or drive out was more of a celebration. Gives you some idea of how awesome PNG people are. The looks on their faces, lined up at the pad fence as the Helo spooled up and lumbered off, I'll never forget that.

This has turned into a rambling rant and I'm sorry about that. 1.122.34.109 (talk) 09:52, 9 August 2016 (UTC)