Protests at ArcelorMittal's Liberian iron ore operations that blocked access to the mines, the site's rail links and offices ended Saturday and production has restarted, the company said.
The group of protesters, which identified itself as "Tokadeh Progressive Youths for Peace and Development," began protests Friday against delays in resettlement payments and other issues with the 4.5 million mt/year facility, ArcelorMittal said.
The company added that the issues have been recently "discussed in a tripartite meeting held between government officials, advocacy groups from the county and management representatives from the company."
The company said it "reaffirms its commitment" to the resettlement plan, which it added is "compliant with both World Bank policy on involuntary resettlement and International Finance Corp. principles and guidelines on social impact mitigation" and that $4.5 million was disbursed in March to farmers in Gbapa and Zolowee.
The company added that calm has now been restored to the area and that as of 6 pm local time Saturday (1800 GMT), workers have returned to the mine and operations have restarted, with the exception of construction work being carried out for phase two of the project, where assessments are under way.
ArcelorMittal Liberia is currently implementing stage two of the iron ore project, which will begin ramping up production to 15 million mt/year by 2015.
Source: Platts
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