“Public participation in responsible mining”

Community open day and discussion

Energy Resources has been implementing a stakeholder engagement plan since 2009.

Under that plan, alongside providing accurate information, the Company has made it a tradition to hold open days and public discussions in order to meet residents face to face, share information and reflect the views and recommendations of residents and the wider public in its work.

This year, on 11–13 October, open days and discussions on the theme “Public participation in responsible mining” were successfully held in Tsogt-Ovoo, Khankhongor and Tsogttsetsii soums — the soums in the mine’s impact area — with more than 700 local residents taking part.

During the open discussions, residents were given information about the Company’s and the mine’s operations, environmental management, social investment in the local area and the projects and programmes supporting local sustainable development; their questions were answered and views were exchanged. Survey forms, request and complaint forms and job applications were also collected.

Residents expressed their appreciation of the Company’s environmental work and, at the same time, their main suggestions concerned conserving water — the most precious resource of the Gobi — and further improving work to reduce the adverse effects of dust.

Many people also highlighted that the social responsibility projects and programmes the Company has delivered over the past decade make a considerable contribution to local sustainable development.

Summarising and ranking the survey results by soum, 24% of residents in Tsogt-Ovoo soum said the newly built soum health centre needed help with medical equipment from the Company, while 16% of residents in Khankhongor soum said the soum’s old sports hall should be converted into an arts hall. In Tsogttsetsii soum, 13% of residents suggested that university graduates should be recruited without work experience being taken into account.

Representatives of the subcontractors of the Ukhaa Khudag and Baruun Naran mines took part in the open days alongside us. The independent monitoring and assessment was carried out by the “Afim Mongolia” NGO.