Asia-Pacific

Landslide prevents workers from reaching mine

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-03-07 15:16

JAKARTA - Hundreds of workers could not reach Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc's Grasberg mine in Papua of eastern Indonesia as a landslide at weekend buried a key road access tunnel to the mine, but the operations continued, spokesman of the firm said on Monday.

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The mine in remote Papua has the world largest reserves of cooper and gold."There was ground failure at Hannekam Tunnel on March 5.  The tunnel is currently closed while work is completed to address the failure. This ground failure occurred outside PT Freeport Indonesia's mining area and production continues normally, " the firm said in an emailed statement.

Spokesman of the firm Ramdani Sirait told Xinhua over phone that hundreds of workers who went for holiday at weekend could not return to the mine located in the highland of Papua, but the mine still could be operated by hundreds of workers who were still in the mine area.

Freeport plans to sell 1 billion pounds of cooper and 1.3 million ounce of gold in 2011, the firm says in its website.