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According to the MiningAustralia website, Queensland police said they planned on “cracking down on workers under the influence of illegal drugs in mining and resources camps over the coming months”
“Queensland Police have put FIFO resource workers under the microscope this week, with sniffer dogs brought in for checks at Surat Basin airports,” the site reported last week.
“Dogs were used to check baggage and passengers at the Roma Airport on Tuesday and at Miles Airport on Wednesday.
“Officers detected only two men with illegal items, in the form of steroids and a mobile phone used in connection with a drug crime.”
However, these operations did not seem extraordinary going by the police response to the report.
“Dogs have been used on a number of operations within the Roma Patrol Group and on this occasion they were used in operations at both the Roma and Miles airports,” Roma Patrol Group inspector Rohan Burke told ENP.
“These operations were not targeted at FIFO workers as Roma Airport is a domestic terminal.
“We do not target any particular group within the community but will continue enforcement across the broader community.
“Unfortunately we have detected drug offences and experienced sudden deaths within local resource camps, however, these instances are proportionate to the wider community.”
The mining site also linked its police crackdown report to the Ostwald Bros supervisor who on September 17 resigned from his job at Eurombah Creek, where an Australia Pacific LNG project gas processing plant is being built.
The man was charged with one count of possession of dangerous drugs and is due to appear in Roma Magistrate’s Court on October 8.
He was the first to find the 34-year-old Ostwald contractor who died in his donga at the Eurombah Creek site on September 12 – the incident which brought police to the site.
The cause of that fatality is not yet publicly known.
A Queensland Workplace Health and Safety spokeswoman previously told EnergyNewsPremium.net that preliminary enquiries into whether it was a suicide had been made but it was yet to be determined whether there would be a full investigation.
