| Source: Jakarta Post
| Date: 7 July 1993
| Request: please post any more info on this!
FREEPORT DENIES IT IS DESTROYING IRIAN ENVIRONMENT.
PT Freeport Indonesia says the recent outbreaks of diarrhoea
and skin disease among the people in Irian Jaya were not
caused by its copper mining activities in the province.
The giant American copper company has been accused by some
local leaders of destroying the environment and polluting the
river water in Irian Jaya's hinterland which they linked with
the recant outbreak of the diseases.
A director of the company Adrie Machribie told reporters
yesterday that the diseases are widespread in Irian Jaya and
are not restricted to villages along the Otomona and Ajikwa
Rivers which have their upper reaches in the mining areas.
Adrie said poor awareness of hygiene and sanitation among the
people was the more likely cause.
Freeport is only discarding tailings which have a
characteristic indistinguishable from natural sediments
carried in the rivers [sic!] he said.
Only a small amount of reagents were used in the process of
separating copper concentrate from the ore, he said, and most
of them were bonded with the concentrate or left in the water
which was recycled, he said.
Laboratory examinations on river water carried out by the firm
revealed no excessive amount of hazardous metal which might
cause the diseases, he added.
Adrie also denied the increase in the reported cases of
miscarriages had anything to do with the mining activities.
an investigation by government health officials in Iwaka town
revealed that the miscarriages might have been caused by poor
nutrition, the mothers' young age or venereal diseases.
The town is located 30km west of the Ajkwa River so the
occurrence could not have been caused by Freeport's
activities, Adrie said.
Last month a group called the Sympathizers for the Mimika-
Amungme Community accused Freeport Indonesia of being
responsible for the outbreaks.
It also charged the company with destroying the environment
around the ming area and said it employed too few local
Irianese.
Freeport president director Hoediatmo Hoed said for economic
reasons Freeport preferred to employ local people but their
skills were inadequate.
To overcome the problem the company is helping a government-
run vocational training centre and provides scholarships to
Irianese to study at universities, Hoediatmo said.
Freeport currently employs 1589 Irianese out of its workforce
of wound 10,000 employees in the province.
Freeport processes 60,000 tons of ore each day. After gong
through the separating process, more than 95 per cent of the
material is dumped into the rivers in the form of tailings.
Hoediatmo admitted that dumping increases the process of
sedimentation int he rivers but said since the same thing
happens naturally it does not harm the environment.
The copper concentrates collected are exported without being
further processed.
Freeport estimates there is 800 million tons of copper ore in
its concession area which it will exploit in 25 to 30 years.
To gain added value, the government has asked Freeport to
build a smelting plant, which it will do in cooperation with
Metal Gesselschaft of Germany and a Japanese company, in
Gresik, East Java. There the concentrates will be processed
to produce copper, gold, silver and sulphuric acid. Operations
are projected to begin three years hence.