Miner Miner Edition 20.indd - Morobe Mining Joint Venture

Safety is nambawan
At Morobe Mining, safety comes second to none and
the ability to maintain a continual state of emergency
preparedness and respond adequately is absolute priority for
the Hidden Valley Emergency Response Team (ERT), the HV
Bulldogs.
Achieving this state is no easy feat and this means, time,
dedication and constant training including staging emergency
drills and mock scenarios.
The month of June saw thirty nine auxiliary members
attend training sessions covering Fire fi ghting Level 2,
Breathing Apparatus (BA) , First Aid and Basic Search and
Rescue.
Keeping with tradition, a planned shutdown at the mill
during the month provided further opportunity for ERT
members to team up with volunteers and provide a rescue
stand-by for all workers involved. During this period the ERT
auxiliaries and Emergency Response Offi cers’ provided a 24
hour quick response team, who performed atmosphere testing
and extra safety and hazard identifi cation while maintaining a
visual presence in the ore processing area.
As part of their ongoing training and as a site statutory
requirement, the ERT are also required to perform lifelike mock
scenarios across the site. This time the Romeo (drill) Rig was
used as the stage where a mock emergency situation was
called for a casualty trapped under a vehicle.
With only a sixteen minute response time, the ERT acted
quickly and in a timely manner to recover the casualty from
Life is more precious than gold
Life is infi nitely more precious than the Gold we produce. So
as Hidden Valley continues to make progress in improving
our Safety Performance it is important that we continue to set
standards that ensure we are looking after our own lives and
the lives of our work mates.
The introduction of Life Saving Rules at Hidden Valley is one
of the ways we are doing this.
Life Saving Rules set the standard for minimum acceptable
behaviours in situations that could place our lives and the lives
of others at risk and are designed so the entire workforce can
relate to and understand them.
As professional miners there are many things to remember
as we go about our daily tasks, as our skills improve and we get
better at what we do we also need to remember the important
things that help save lives.
At Hidden Valley we don’t want people taking short cuts
in the name of production and we consider the lives of our
workers to be so important to us that breaking these rules can
result in serious disciplinary consequences.
They are in place across the whole site and it is important
that everyone has a good knowledge of them. We will run
an education program on them and they will be part of the
induction so everyone knows them.
Life Saving Rules = Rules that we can all live by.
Simon O’Kane, Safety Manager
Hidden Valley
4
LONG HAUL UP: Members of Hidden Valley ERT led by Emergency Response
Supervisor, Ronald Etep (left) carrying the casualty from Romeo Rig to a
waiting ambulance at the top of the hill during the lifelike mock scenario.
under the vehicle.
This exercise required the cooperation of the site
paramedics who assisted with stabilising the casualty before
the ERT could make the long journey carrying the casualty to
the waiting ambulance at the top of the long steep hill.
It was another eventful month, once again demonstrating
the professionalism and dedication of the HV ERT.
Consequences of
not complying with
our Life Saving Rules
• Breach of a Life Saving Rule will be
classifi ed as an incident which will be
fully and transparently investigated.
• If an investigation fi nds an individual
has been deliberately negligent,
disciplinary action will be taken up to
and including a fi nal written warning
and dismissal.
• Where its determined that any
individual was grossly negligent
in their actions, knowingly worked
outside of the Life Saving Rules
or has repeatedly made errors of
judgment in their application then
the individual’s employment contract
may be terminated or site access
privileges removed.