Administrative bungle leaves Lightning Ridge opal miners unable to work

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I would hope the miners affected just keep on doing what they have been doing, and tell the government to fix it, as it was the department that caused the problem, so fix it, and we'll just keep doing what we were doing, and that is mining for Opal
All have been warned Not to mine, or suffer the wraith of the Department... After the meeting yesterday , Miners only know that they are NOT allowed to mine any ground that has been granted since January 2015.... Thats all the department told them..

LW...
 
Hi all,
We had the meeting here last Tuesday as LW said, and everyone was told to cease work until the full issue is resolved. Needles to say there weren't many happy faces in there. It affected pretty much every registered claim at this point and will take them many months-years to resolve. I just received a fair amount of paperwork to sort out my two claims even though we did abide by the regulations set in place in the 2015 amendment change to the mines act that caused this problem.

The issue was as simple as any letter or notification to a landholder had to be sent certified mail prior to registration and the receipt given to the mines dept. upon final registration. We have done this as far back as I can remember, but I guess not everyone was following the known rules and here we are.

The other outcome from this (outside of a class action by the miners for full compensation) was that we will force the government to reinstate a full time Registrar to be implemented instead of having to deal with hotlines at head office in Maitland. Ever since we lost the Registrar it's been going downhill.

There's a further meeting on the 6th of June with the mines minister apparently. See how it goes.

Kindest regards,
Shauno.
 

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