A delegation that attended the Economic Sector Retreat Forum in Madang this week was impressed with the performances of Ramu NiCo Management (MCC) Limited for its social economic services to the People of Madang.
Ramu NiCo Community Affairs General Manager Erick Kuman presented a remarkable outlined of Ramu NiCo’s expenditure on the company’s royalties and how it benefitted communities along the foot prints of the mine in four landowning areas.
Mr Kuman said apart from distributing royalties to its project impacted areas, Ramu NiCo also stretched further to make its presence felt all around Madang province
Beside royalty distributions, the company has job training programs that focus on training landowners to work in the mine and also has different training programs like the three months industrial training program and the Graduate Development scheme program to honor its obligation to the country in human resources development. “We have recently recruited 20 recently graduated students for our GDS program as part of our human resource development,” he said.
Madang governor Ramsey Pariwa commended Ramu NiCo for its development contribution to Madang and announced that he presented a certificate of Excellence to Ramu NiCo last month for its Social Contribution to Madang province.“ Ramu NiCo is located in Madang and has been silently improving the lives of people there.”
Former Madang governor James Yali said late Grand Chief Sir Michael Somare did not make a mistake to invite the Chinese to develop Ramu NiCo.
Mr Yali who was the then Madang governor at the time when the Ramu NiCo deal was signed said, Somare knew Chinese as hard working people and would stop at nothing when they want to achieve something, so he created the Look North Policy and following that, he invited the Chinese to take over Ramu NiCo.
Mr Kuman said Ramu NiCo was branded by many prospect as very risky and not an economically viable project to develop because it was a technically complex project to develop. “While the world refused to develop Ramu NiCo project and branding it as too risky and not economically viable, the Chinese choose to invest in PNG,” he said.
Mr Pariwa said Ramu NiCo is here to stay and the people of Madang would expect more from the company.
