Fiji landowners ‘blinded by cash’

Nawailevu – A Fiji chief says the government is pushing companies to operate mines in the country, with little regard for the environmental impacts on people’s land.

The Chinese company Aurum Exploration Limited recently completed mining at a site in Nawailevu, which produced almost one million tonnes of bauxite and has commenced mining at two others sites.

Bua chief Adi Filomena Tagivetaua was part of a team that undertook a survey in Nawailevu village in 2012 and says the Nawailevu mining project is a disaster.

“The villagers told me that they had agreed that the people mine bauxite but later they realised that they were cutting soil onto the boats that sailed to China. There was no machinery in Nawailevu to refine, to take away the bauxite from the soil so they took the whole soil, tonnes and tonnes.

“They had no say at all. The people that came to introduce the mining, they gathered them into their community hall and after a lot of discussions, at the end one of them told them ‘whether you like it or not the bauxite will be mined in your land’.

“They usually fish prawns and eels from the nearby creeks near the village, they didn’t want to do that anymore because the eels had turned a different colour.

“They were afraid to feed their families with prawns and they thought something poisonous might be in the water.

“There were places where they usually got their vegetables that grew wildly, they were not allowed to pass points there. “They had soldiers standing there to keep them away from the mining site. That’s where their forefathers fed their families, they were stopped from all that.

“And the people had this eye infection that went on for weeks and weeks and the eye drops they get from the hospital could not heal it and then they had asthma from coughing developed to asthma.”

Adi Filomena says the government is doing nothing to protect people’s land from companies that come in with a lot of money and promises.

She says landowners were blinded by cash payouts and were never told of the potential side effects of the bauxite mining.

“They were never told anything, they were just given some money at the beginning and they blinded them with that money, I think $2000 dollars for each member of the family and that was it.”

- RNZI