Around 13,000 people live off the tailings of the PT Freeport Indonesia goldmine in Papua.
In 1967, the opening of the PT Freeport Indonesia (PTFI) goldmine in Timika gave the local population hopes of employment.
Today, 25% of its employees are from the local community but many have not been able to secure a job as the company requires
workers to have completed high school. Instead, many locals have become informal miners, working in PTFI’s tailing areas, dumps
of material left over after the mining process, along the Ajkwa river.
The Ajkwa river was named by the Kamoro people, a group of around 13,000 Pacific islanders living along the south coast
of Papua, in Indonesia. The Kamoro relied on the river for fish, transportation, and the riverbanks were lined by sago forests,
a staple food for the people. Today, this river is known locally as Kali Kabur. People say that the name kabur, meaning ‘blurry’,
refers to the flow of the water.
Damianus and his son, Yohanis, pour water over sand in search of gold. In 2013, the Timika Illegal Miners Management and
Development Forum, recorded 13,000 people working in the Ajkwa river.
Most of the informal miners – especially those from the Papuan coastal areas such Kamoro, Asmat, and Merauke – bring their families
to stay in camps along the river. Although going to school in Papua is free, most of the miners children are not enrolled; some say they
are reluctant or do not need to go, others say they are scared of school. Photograph: Vembri Waluyas
Miners can usually find one to two grams of gold a day in the Ajkwa river. This earns them around £23 – a large sum of money in the
area, and one of the many reasons people leave their villages to do this work. Photograph: Vembri Waluyas
Damianus and his daughter, Agustina, watch a film on a mobile phone. The river-side camps do not have access to piped water or
electricity, though some families have generators. Families must gather rainwater and buy water as the river is not safe to drink from.
Photograph: Vembri Waluyas
As well as becoming miners alongside their parents, teenagers also become porters at the bus station, helping PTFI employees
in transit. The teenagers are known as aibon children, after a brand of glue they smoke. The glue contains trichloroethylene,
a chemical that can causes loss of balance, dizziness, euphoria and hallucinations. The children usually pool their money to
buy aibon and then divide it up.
The main diet of the Kamoro people is sago and fish, but today, many of the sago forests along the river are gone, so people often
have to buy food to eat. Here, miners’ children look for snails to sell. One bucket of snails usually fetches around 40,000 Indonesian
rupiah (£2.30).
At present, there is no particular state regulation for these informal miners. They are allowed to continue to live along the Ajkwa river
as long as they don’t construct sanitation facilities or other permanent structures. In 2000, the PTFI tried to prohibit people from working
in the tailing areas, but no other employment solutions were offered. Photograph: Vembri Waluyas
