BY EFFREY DADEMO

OUR COMMUNITY BASED campaign organisation, ACT NOW! has launched an email action against Harmony Gold and Newcrest Mining, owners of the Hidden Valley mine in PNG.

ACT NOW is asking the general public to send messages to the two companies through its website, calling on them to ‘come clean’ about their acidification of the Watut river system.

For too long foreign resource companies operating in PNG have been able to take advantage of our lax environmental monitoring and enforcement and ignore or cover up the problems they cause.

The email action is part of ACT NOW’s wider campaign on corporate responsibility and the need to ensure all persons and organisations follow the PNG Constitution.

If the government cannot, or will not, police these companies operations, then it falls on ordinary citizen’s to make their voices heard.

Members of the public can send their emails by going to www.actnowpng.org/action

Papua New Guineans are sick and fed up with having to deal with the appalling environmental problems caused by foreign companies operating on our land.

Last week ACT NOW organised a protest in Brisbane against Australian listed mining company Highlands Pacific, after its members had sent 500 emails to the company in protest at its involvement in the Ramu nickel mine which will dump millions of tons of waste into the sea.