MANILA – No mining company must be spared when the government starts cracking down on mining industry in light of President Rodrigo Duterte’s desire to ban open-pit mining, a former Cabinet member said.
Terry Ridon, the lead convenor of think tank Infra Watch, made the call after at least 39 miners died in a landslide in Itogon, Benguet amid the onslaught of typhoon “Ompong.” At least 30 people are still missing from the incident.
“There’s should be no sacred cows in this renewed impact assessment of mining in the country. If government officials are found to have served as protectors of illegal mining operations, they should all be brought to court. If they have benefited from the pillage of the soil and endangered the lives of our people, they should be made to pay the price,” Ridon said.
“Do it, Mr. President. Unless the mining industry can comply with strict standards to prevent the loss of lives and environmental destruction, the sun should finally set on mining,” Ridon, a lawyer who served as the Commissioner of the Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor, said in a statement.
Duterte earlier said that the government will probe the dangers of open-pit mining in light of the tragic incident in Itogon.
Ridon claimed that the absence of strict industry regulations caused numerous problems such as large-scale operations are being undertaken by small-scale mining groups. In other cases, royalty fees not being paid because the government failed to declare these areas as mineral reservation areas.
On Tuesday, Edgar Allan Tabel of the Interior and Local Government department’s Central Office Disaster Information Coordinating Center said in another statement that while the local government of Itogon implemented preemptive evacuation before typhoon “Ompong” hit land on Saturday, Sept. 15, the miners who died or went missing evacuated to an unsafe area.
“We received a report that the LGU conducted preemptive evacuation prior to Ompong. Unfortunately, the miners evacuated to another area which happens to be landslide-prone,” Tabel said.
Tabel cited that the DILG, as the lead agency of the Management of the Dead and Missing (MDM) cluster, has already deployed MDM-Benguet to search for missing persons in coordination with other national government agencies in the cluster.
In 2016, Duterte appointed longtime anti-mining advocate Regina Lopez as secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).
During her tenure at the DENR, Lopez called for a ban on mining operations in all proclaimed watersheds. She insisted that it was within her power to institute government policies such as sparing all proclaimed watersheds from mining activities.
Lopez also ordered the suspension of at least 22 mining companies for various infractions of the mining law. But not a single mining company was closed, after the miners made an appealed before the Office of the President.
Lopez eventually lost her post after the Commission on Appointments (CA) – congressional panel screening presidential appointees – rejected her. The Palace did not act on Lopez’s order to close shop the 22 supposedly erring mining companies until her appointment was rejected by the CA.
Since then, Lopez has been replaced by former military man Roy Cimatu. (GMA News)
