On Friday, indonesia’s Grasberg gold and copper mine ended a protest calling for a remnant of the coronavirus closure at the mine operated through a local Freeport-McMoran Inc. unit, a representative and the company said.
Mining operations stopped after protesters blocked access to the world’s largest copper mine from Monday, asking the company to resume a bus service to allow them to approach the city and get a bonus.
Yonpis Tabuni, workers’ representative, said via text message that all his demands were met and that the demonstration was over.
Freeport employs another 13,000 people in Tembagapura, the closest town to the Grasberg mine
He shared a video featuring staff opening barricades, shrouded in thick fog and rain, in the mine at a mountaintop mining complex in Papua’s easternmost region.
“We have achieved peace with the administration,” said another employee who refused to be identified, adding that the company had given them a written note of the agreement. Freeport Indonesia showed Friday that blockades had been lifted after it had in the past said that local government had given permission to lockout restrictions.
Riza Pratama, spokesman for Freeport Indonesia, said Thursday that the company and local government agreed to loosen the curbs to allow staff to abandon control of the mine and nearby town.
The local government would allow some of the staff to leave Grasberg a day after performing an immediate coronavirus check, rather than polymerase chain reaction control (PCR), he said.
They will also have to pass a temperature check when they arrive near the city. Pratama said priority will be given to 4,600 employees who had not taken any leave since April. Freeport employs another 13,000 people in Tembagapura, the closest city to the city. Mina Grasberg Of these, 389 had tested positive for coronavirus and the 28 had recovered, Pratama said Wednesday.
(By Agustinus Beo Da Costa, Fransiska Nangoy and Ed Davies; Edited through Martin Petty)