Source: Post Courier

MANY school-age girls in the Panguna and Bana districts of Bougainville are not attending school, say authorities.

The girls are engaged in the lucrative gold mining business – panning the length and breadth of Panguna rivers, among the tailings from the decommissioned Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) mine.

Instead of attending school young girls and boys can be seen panning for gold with their parents and elderly relatives along the Jaba and Kavarong Rivers tailings.

According to school authorities, the number of enrolment for the students in the alluvial mining areas has dropped dramatically because of gold discoveries in the tailings.

When asked why they are panning for gold instead to going to school, one girl replied, "so that we can have money at the end of the day, when attending school, we get nothing, no money."

Since the BCL operations at the Panguna mine, there is no land for subsistence farming as all the land has been dug up and forest and rivers destroyed.

This has forced the people to resort to gold panning to buy store goods to feed their families.

A grade five student said they felt sorry for their parents and followed them because panning is labour-intensive and they needed all the help they could get.

Education authorities have acknowledged that they have a growing problem because more and more children are flocking to the gold fields where returns are high.