ML: Int 15 collates the data and presents it, I actually collect it form the sites.
ML: Ok, so you’re across it. How do you, I’m sure I read in your sustainability report that you do a regular measuring, that you do actually measure outcomes. Can you just in a nutshell, tell me how you do that?
INT12: I’m not sure what that one is referring to, we do consistently review the data that’s provided and most of the data is empirical, so it can be tested, look in the last couple of years I’ve…I collected it last year and I collected it, well it’s due for collection in the next couple of days. It’s quite a process, there’s a lot of information to collect, and we’ve been doing this for about three or four years now and last year it was a dgo’s breakfast, people were sending in stuff that was horrible and apparently the year before was even worse, so this year I’m hoping it’s better. But for me the challenge was putting it back out to the sites that ultimately the numbers that we’re providing are auditable, so they need to be able to one understand where they are getting the numbers from and two be able to prove it to an independent auditor. So there’s a lot more tightening up of where the information comes from, the health and safety data is from a single source, a lot of the community data will be from logs, so there will be minutes of meetings, there will be training records and all of that sort of thing will be available to support the information that we provide.
ML: I guess what I was interested in is when you set out to benefit the community, including putting in place sort of initiatives and programs around health and education it’s sometimes difficult to know what effect you’re having. It’s hard to measure whether you have affected the literacy rate or whether people are healthier and I guess I was trying to get a sense of how you gauge that your Social Development Fund is achieving the outcomes that you want it to.
INT12: Yeah, ok. That becomes a different question, or a different answer. The GRI is about the things that we do, not necessarily about the effect of the things that we do. So, you know, for example, we will provide a set of targets or objectives that we are going to commit to for 2014 in 2013, and in 2014 we will say did we achieve it or did we not achieve it or if it was a partial achieve. So if we were going to run five programs, education or health programs, as long as we ran them….I think where we need to be able to assess the impact from the sites is in the social impact assessments which would become an external study and we would undertake baseline social impact studies priorto going in or at the start of our operations and you’d be looking, or you should be looking at things like the general living conditions of people in the area, the disposable wealth, the level of education, level of health etcetera the level and types of facilities in the local area and compare them through the development of the mine site.
ML: Right, ok. Do you have …have you done that exercise sort of to date or anecdotally could you say how you think you’ve affected the community, does it look like people are healthier or…just off the top of your head, how do you think the company being there has affected, impacted the community? INT12: There’s definitely a lot more wealth in the community, it’s really extraordinary how much
housing development there is in the township immediately adjacent to the mine site and how salubrious some of the buildings are being constructed. It’s quite amazing, there’s concrete roads going in and the number of small motorcycles, brand new that are now getting parked outside our gates as the
employees come to work from the local town is pretty amazing so, there is definitely a transfer of wealth into that community, a lot of little shops adjacent to the mine, where people from the mine will either, if they are from the community, duck out and grab a bite from these shops, or they’ll go there getting breakfast on the way to or from work,. So definitely there’s an impact there, I can’t comment on education and other facilities but you can certainly see that manifestly there is more money in that community.
ML: OK. And does that translate to less poverty? Is it confined to the people that the mine employs or who have a business that supplies the mine or does it seem just anecdotally that everyone is better off? INT12: I think there is…look not everyone’s got a share of the pie but like I said the small businesses, there’d be a garage facility to service those motorcycles, there’ll be, as I said, the little food shops that people will go to, there’ll be more of those. Look I don’t count the businesses that are popping up in support of the greater disposable wealth…
ML: More money in the community does flow through there’s no doubt about it. Do you…in addition to the GRI and the Equator Principles are there any industry sort of codes of conduct or frameworks, so many codes and things have popped up in the last few years are there any others that particularly interest or influence you? Like the ICMM, the IFC has a set of standards as well, there’s a lot of different things that people are now compliant with. I’m just wondering which ones in particular in addition to GRI... ?
INT12: Look I don’t think we map ourselves necessarily against those or have signed up to them so you know I haven’t really tried to wade through much in terms of that, but I guess if you haven’t seen a copy of our CSR policy, certainly within that policy we state in terms of the human rights that we commit to adhering to the voluntary principles on security and human rights so that VPSHR is something that we’re…we may not have signed a piece of paper , but because it’s a boldly declared in our policy that’s something that we must adhere to.
ML: I meant to ask you something about the GRI as well and if you don’t…this might be a question for Int 15, but do you formally report against it or do you report against some of the standards? Do you actually submit a report to the Carbon Disclosure Project?
INT12: I’m pretty certain that we are signed up to it, that is one for (Int 15) to confirm though. But I’m pretty sure that we actually...there are different levels that you can go to with the GRI, but I’m pretty wure we’ve actually…we’re not just doing it with alignment we are doing it as a sign up at one of the levels.
Q 6: What external factors support or constrain the company’s CSR or sustainability activities in