DEAR EDITOR – I wish to respond to Dick Douglas, SIBC current affairs news yesterday regarding the call for St Barbara Mining Limited to return.
We the new generation of Central Guadalcanal resource owners representing the 16 tribes who have entered into an agreement with Gold Ridge Mining Limited in 1996, wish to make the following response:
We totally reject any call or request from either the Gold Ridge landowners council, Guadalcanal Province or the National Government to recall St Barbara back to Gold Ridge.
We welcome and accept St Barbara to leave for good, we are free now our people stop feeling the pain that we have experienced during St Barbara’s time.
We have lost everything, including our natural resources (Gold & Silver) with little being paid to us in the name of royalty, poor recovery, poor management, poor relationship, poor coordination by the national &provincial governments.
We welcome your departure St Barbara so that we can be free to discuss with the national government, provincial government for a better Joint venture arrangement that will benefit our generation. We rejected the current sharing of less than just 2% only, the lowest paid to landowners in the mining world.
We request the HPrime Minister and the Government to respect our calls as the new generation of Central Guadalcanal to help us by finding a better investor, but stop request St Barbara’s return because it will never do us any good.
Stanley Kaoni Sahatan
Central Guadalcanal
