Students protest Newmont mineral waste

At least 30 students from senior high schools came to the office of the legislative council of the Bolmong regency in North Sulawesi demanding the legislators to do something with the pollution resulted from PT Newmont Minahasa Raya's tailing dumping area in the Buyat Gulf, Manado Post reported on Thursday.

The students said that the pollution in the Buyat Gulf and the river water used to channel the company's mineral waste to the gulf had not only killed fishes but had also caused the spreading of skin diseases.

They also complained that the people in the Bolaang-Mongondow regency had been treated unfairly by the provincial administration because unlike Minahasa regency, which received a financial benefit not only in the form of tax but also royalties from the company's operation, their regency, received only the company's waste.

The company dumps at least 2,000 tons of tailing into the gulf a day and has operated its tailing dumping activities in the area since 1996.

The local environmental organizations have charged that the river through which the mining company dumped its tailing, and the sea water where the waste was dumped, had been badly polluted. They said that many local people, the frequent users of the river have suffered skin disease.

The local government in Minahasa regency has sued the company for not paying the local tax on the C-class mineral materials such as gravel, sand, stone and soil it removed from its mining site. But it later dropped the case after the two parties agreed to settle the case out of the court. (*)