NSW: Paid up Cobar miners want inquiry reopened

AAP General News (Australia)
12-22-1998
NSW: Paid up Cobar miners want inquiry reopened

SYDNEY, Dec 22 AAP - Cobar miners received their long-awaited payout cheques today and used
the occasion to call for the reopening of a parliamentary inquiry into the protection of
workers' entitlements.

About 260 miners were retrenched in January last year when the copper mine in the western
New South Wales town closed and went into administration.

They have been fighting since to obtain millions of dollars in wages, annual and long
service leave, superannuation and redundancy entitlements.

The Rural Workers Union (RWU), which has agitated for the payments, today said more than
$5.3 million of a settlement package was transferred from the accounts of liquidators
PricewaterhouseCoopers and Star Dean-Wilcocks to the bank accounts of the miners.

A total of $6 million was left owing to local businesses, the RWU said.

Through the deal, the former workers receive 85 per cent of what was owed to them and the
other unsecured creditors 29 per cent of what was owed to them to be paid in February 1999.

RWU secretary Stephen Roach said a claim against Coopers and Lybrand, the financial
advisers of former mine owner Ashanti Goldfields of Ghana, had been made by liquidator Star
Dean-Wilcocks for the remainder of the outstanding money.

Mr Roach said the meeting of employees and creditors in Cobar unanimously called for the
reconstitution of a federal parliamentary inquiry.

That inquiry had been conducted by the parliamentary joint committee on corporations and
securities in the life of the last parliament.

Mr Roach said there remained no proper legislative protections for workers and creditors in
relation to corporate insolvency.

AAP dep/tsm

KEYWORD: COBAR (CARRIED EARLIER)

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