Police Will Not Deploy Team to Investigate Freeport Mine Collapse
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Selasa, 16 September 2014 18:50 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – The Papua Police said they would not deploy an investigation team to probe the recent death of Bobby Hermawan, 33, a Freeport employee who was buried when the West Muck Bay underground mine at Grasberg Block Cave of PT Freeport Indonesia collapsed on Friday.
“We will not dispatch our investigation team directly because the incident happened in an underground mine. We cannot yet identify the cause of the mine collapse,” said Sr. Comr. Sulistyo Pudjo Hartono, the Papua Police public relations chief, on Monday, September 15, 2014.
Sulistyo added the Papua Police, however, would assist a team assigned by the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry in investigating the cause of the collapse. “We will help when the team arrives in Papua,” he said.
Sulistyo explained PT Freeport had formed a joint team to rescue those who were still buried in the mine. “There is a team from Freeport with high-tech equipment that is tasked to rescue the victims. We only have the authority to keep the mine secure,” he said.
The mine collapsed on Friday, September 12, 2014 at around 11.30 p.m. local time, burying Freeport employee Bobby Hermawan, whose body has been flown to his hometown of Garut, West Java.
AMOS SIMANUNGKALIT
