Freeport suspended

The government finally decided on Friday to temporarily forbid giant gold mining company PT Freeport Indonesia from dumping its overburden into the Wanagon Lake until the company could come out with a concrete action plan to prevent recent landslide accident to occur in the future, according to Bisnis Indonesia daily in its Saturday edition.

The paper said that the ban effectively means the suspension of Freeport's open pit mining operation.

"As of today (Friday) the government has decided to temporarily forbid Freeport from dumping its overburden into the Wanagon lake," director general of mining Surna T. Djajadiningrat was quoted by the paper as saying.

A landslide accident that killed four mining employees occurred at the Wanagon lake recently.

Surna said that the government would allow Freeport to resume the open pit operation if the company could manage to come up with concrete measures to prevent similar accident to reoccur.

But Surna added that the measures must be approved by the government. (*)