15 Jun 2012

Young people working for mine justice for Fiji landowners

7:14 am on 15 June 2012

A group of young people in Fiji have begun a campaign to fight for justice for the owners of land a Chinese company is using to mine for bauxite.

A group member, Filomena Tuivanualevu, says extraction at the aluminium ore mine near Bua on Vanua Levu began last November and has resulted in a number of environmental impacts.

She says the group are organising workshops to give the landowners the information they need to battle for redress.

"To begin with there were no consultations that were very public or available for people to question or input into that process, as well as just a vagueness about things like an environmental impact assessment, which should have been a public document but wasn't."

Filomena Tuivanualevu says the mining has resulted in large-scale clearing of trees, which has created a lot of dust.

She also says after a period of heavy rain women gathering shellfish and seaweed downstream from the mine noticed that they were dead.