The Chinese firm Wanbao’s Burma subsidiary has reportedly told locals in the Letpadaung mine area that it has no plan to compensate them further, after hundreds of would-be farmers sought payment for crops forgone last year due to the project.

…[R]esponsible officials from Wanbao and Sagaing Division’s security and border affairs minister, Col. Kyaw Thant Naing, told the locals that compensation would not be provided in lieu of the money that a 2015 harvest might have yielded, according to Mar Mar Cho, a resident of Tonywa village….

“Around 300 locals met the responsible person of Wanbao and the security and border affairs minister. They said they would not pay compensation because there was no crop grown on the farmlands,” Mar Mar Cho told The Irrawaddy…

Asked by The Irrawaddy whether the company planned to offer compensation, Dong Yunfei, a manager of Myanmar Wanbao Mining Copper Limited in Rangoon, told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday that it would depend on the decision of the Burmese government…