No Protest, Walkout, Says Mine Manager
Police thought it was prudent to send a contingent over to Vatukoula for the purpose of ensuring that there were no issues of damage to property or personal safety
Vatukoula Gold Mine Limited corporate services manager Dinny Laufenboeck confirmed there was no dispute or protest between management and workers.
“I know that there were a lot of rumours about a protest, about a walkout, but operations in Vatukoula have been perfectly normal this week,” said the senior advisor to the VGML general manager.
This is contrary to earlier media reports, however she did confirm that the Police were present within their vicinity on Thursday. “Police presence was here because of the rumours, but we did not ask the Police to come. They felt it was prudent, given the economy sensitivity of Vatukoula,” Ms Laufenboeck said.
“Because we all need Vatukoula to be working.”
She said the Police thought it was prudent to send a contingent over to Vatukoula for the purpose of ensuring that there were no issues of damage to property or personal safety. “It was an act of prudence on their part because of the rumors that had been circulating since the weekend that there would be some form of protest, but no such protest took place.”
Ms Laufenboeck said that was the reason it was difficult to address rumors that were circulating, suggesting that they called the police in as “a scare tactic”.
“That would be the last thing that we would do,” she said.
“But having said that. management needs to work and give employees the confidence so that when they have issues they can bring them up to senior management. “Then together as a team we must try and find solutions, there may be no quick fixes to some of them, but there will surely be something that we can do.” She said they had been having a number of talanoa sessions with their employees on working conditions and figuring out ways they could go about addressing it.
“Mining is a difficult occupation, there is no question about it because if it was not, then gold would be a fraction of the cost of what it is right now,” Ms Laufenboeck said. “It is a challenging industry.” “Vatukoula is a very old mine and the deeper that we have to go, the closer we will be getting in to the caldera contact, that is the contact of the core of the volcano.” This is given that the Tavua basin is situated on an extinct volcano and according to Ms Laufenboeck this was not something new because Vatukoula was an old mine and the conditions were challenging.