ENSURING that Health Safety and Environment (HSE) comply with standards and guidelines is of paramount importance to the work of HSE personnel in any mining company, and Ramu NiCo Management Limited’s (RNML) HSE Department at its Kurumbukari Mine is no exception.
RNML’s Kurumbukari Mine HSE supervisor, Nathaniel Wadakai said their work basically surrounds compliance to standards of health and safety; including environment compliance, being the department in charge of health safety and environment.
“We normally go out and do inspections, and anything that is deemed non-compliant are reported to ensure that everything has to be in accordance to the set standards and guidelines used widely, and at the same time to ensure that the company is complying with legal requirements so that nothing is done to disrupt the company’s operations,” he said.
“Forrehabilitation, after the mining of a piece of land is completed and pits exhausted, the reclamation process begins; or what can be described as’engineering rehabilitation’, where restructure of landform is done, overburden and top soil are placed, so that the land structure is stabilised and left to allow for natural re-vegetation to occur.
“On that top soil, there are natural seedlings that will grow when placed on the reclaimed land.”
Mr Wadakai said currently within the RNML Kurumbukari mining site, there’s evidence of natural revegetation but two to three years after the natural re-vegetation process, the HSE team goes ahead with the planting of endemic species or the tree species native to the areas mined.
However, because the planting of endemic species will need manpower, plans are in place, that once ready, locals from surrounding impact communities will be recruited to assist with the planting of endemic species.
This process, though will not bring the land back to its original state, will only bring it back at least to its natural and or accepted form by allowing natural re-vegetation and planting of endemic species to happen as per the company’s operational environment management plan.
