(Adds comments from company, government official)
Nov 8 (Reuters) - Hudbay Minerals Inc HBM.TO has suspended operations at its Constancia copper mine in Peru after "trespassers" from a nearby highland town occupied the open pit area, the Canadian mining company said on Tuesday.
The decision was necessary to ensure the safety of employees and the people in the mine site, Hudbay said in a statement. Police are at the mine, and the company is working with national and local governments to resolve the situation.
Residents from the southern Andean province of Chumbivilcas staged a protest inside of the mine to demand development projects such as schools that they say the company had committed to building, said Jose Reategui, an adviser in the cabinet's National Office of Dialogue.
"The company says they have fulfilled their promises and have built projects, but that doesn't seem to be well known among residents," said Reategui, who recently visited the region.
Hudbay said the protesters had not presented specific demands and that it signed a social cooperation agreement with the local and national governments in the past two weeks.
Government-mediated talks between Hudbay and the protesters have been scheduled for Wednesday, Reategui said.
The conflict is the latest escalation of grievances against mining companies in Peru, the world's third-biggest copper producer, since centrist President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski took office in July. Clashes over extractive industries also shook the governments of former presidents Ollanta Humala and Alan Garcia.
The dispute is less than 100 kilometers (62 miles) from protests that left one local man dead last month and halted Chinese-owned miner MMG Ltd's 1208.HK exports from copper mine Las Bambas for days. between locals and police near a gold mine controlled by Consorcio Minero Horizonte SA's left one man dead and scores wounded over the weekend, the local miner said on Sunday.
Constancia started operations in late 2014 and produced about 11,000 tonnes of copper per month in the first nine months of this year, according to government data.