MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Second de-mining phase for Falklands

De-mining expert working in Falklands’ peaty soil in search of minimum metal mines (Photo by Kev Bryant.)

A SECOND phase of de-mining is planned on the Falkland Islands from November this year.

A Falkland Islands Government House representative Ralph Jones confirmed, “The Foreign Office has funding to undertake a small project on the Falkland Islands. The project is in the planning stage and no site has been identified as yet.”

Foreign and Commonwealth officials and Ministry of Defence officials will visit the Falkland Islands in early February to discuss options with the Falkland Islands Government.

Mr Jones said, “We are planning that work will start in the next Austral summer, that is November 2011.” No decision has yet been made regarding who will undertake the work.

Mr Jones explained,”Nothing has been decided. Any contract will be the subject of an open competition and the contract will be awarded based on competence, experience, reliability, methodology and cost after a robust evaluation exercise.” Although no sites have been identified it is believed that the area known as Stanley Common to the south of Stanley is the most likely for clearance to be undertaken.

Prior to the 1982 War with Argentina when Argentine troops laid the mines, ‘the common’ was used for leisure activities including hiking and horse riding.

Many Stanley residents hope that the area around, and access to, the historic and attractive ‘stone corral’ built by Jacob Napoleon Goss in 1860 to the South West of Stanley will also be chosen for clearance.

The company contracted to oversee quality control of clearance has also yet to be chosen. Mr Jones said again, “…Any contract will be the subject of an open competition.”

He added, “The final costs will be subject to contract negotiations. Obviously for confidentiality reasons we are unable to disclose the amount we have set aside.”

Completion of the Falkland Islands Programme Phase 1 under the De-mining Contractor, BACTEC International Ltd, was completed within a single austral summer period in June 2010.

There were four clearance tasks at that time including two known minefields close to Stanley (Sapper Hill and Surf Bay) which both had detailed records and one Suspect Hazardous Area in each of the Goose Green and Fox Bay Camp areas.

On completion of that phase the Demining Programme Officer in Stanley Robin Swanson said, “… the UK Government will have a much better understanding about the challenges of the remaining mined areas (approximately 113). This phase of the clearance will have reduced the number of mines buried in the Falkland Islands by 5% but in terms of area cleared it is a very small percentage.

However, it will definitely be able to inform future projects about the technical, environmental and logistic challenges associated with clearance in the Falkland Islands and provide more accurate planning data for follow-on phases.”

by Lisa Watson - SeAledPR - Stanley