The Hela Provincial Government has presented to the State its Position Paper containing its development aspirations and plans of receiving benefits, pertaining to the power supply from Hides in Hela, to the New Porgera Mine in the Enga province.
Hela Governor, Philip Undialu, said Hela is a key partner to the development of the Porgera Mine, having supplied 70megawatt of power for the last 30 years and now with the gas to power generation from Hides PDL 1 area, it adds to the continued electricity supply that would see the gold mine, when reopened soon, continues to benefit from it and progress with the mining of gold in the Porgera Valley.
“About 70 kilometers of power line runs from Hides in my province into Porgera,” said the Hela Governor.
With the gas- to- power added to the supply to Porgera, this has now resulted in new arrangements for all parties involved including the provincial government, which has resulted in the Position Paper being handed over to the Mining Minister, Sir Ano Pala.
There are sixteen issues that the provincial government has put together on behalf of the four Hela Stakeholders directly impacted by this project arrangement.
However, Mr. Undialu said all these issues have been bunched up together and put into two main options in the Position Paper and handed over to the State to go through.
“All the issues are straight forward, most of them a legacy issues.”
The Position Paper is part of the Development Forum process for the Porgera Mine, which was launched recently in Wabag Town, Enga.
Every party involved in this project has handed in their Position Papers with the Hela Provincial Government being the latest.
The only party that is yet to give its Position Paper is the Enga Provincial Government.
Mining Minister Sir Ano Pala, when presented with the Position Paper by Governor Undialu, stated that the State team will meet up at Wabag Town tomorrow, Monday 11th September to give the Enga Governor, Sir Peter Ipatas the opportunity to present his provincial government’s Position Paper to the State.
Once all Position Papers have been presented, the Development Forum process will end.
The next process to commence will be the Community Development Agreement where the discussions on who gets how much from the Mining project, begin.
Meanwhile, Governor Undialu presented his Provincial Government’s Position Paper to the Ministers Minister on Friday 08th September, in Port Moresby city.
The event was witnessed by the leaders of impacted landowner groups from Hela, the Government State Negotiation Team and state ministers.