ARDUOUS JOB… A gold panner works his pabirik to separate gold
dust from the dirt.
Mambulao’s small-scale gold miners in a hide-and-seek mode to avoid arrest
The local industry struggles, says Municipal Environment and Natural Resources Officer Sarah Marie Pante-Aviado
By ALFREDO P
HERNANDEZ
 |
A young ball mill operator unloads crushed gold ores from the chamber of the mill. |
The hide-and-seek affair across the municipality has been going on since the first two Minahang Bayan (MB) sites in the province were given go signals a few years ago to operate, Sarah Marie Pante-Aviado, Municipal Environment and Natural Resources Officer, told OpinYon.net in a video cam interview recently.
The two operating MBs are in the nearby towns of Labo and Paracale, covering 20 hectares and 26.4 hectares, respectively, the Mines and Geosciences Bureau said.
Under the MB
rules, no mining could be done outside of a designated community mining site.
“Kawawa
naman ang mga magkakabod (gold panners-miners) kasi walang declared Minahang
Bayan dito hanggang ngayon … kaya nagtagago sila sa kanilang pagkakabod para di
sila mahuli (I pity the magkakabod in our municipality … they cannot operate
legally as there is no designated Minahang Bayan yet where they can work,”)
says Aviado.
“The usual
penalty is Php25,000 for the violation and this is usually shouldered by the
“financier” (gold mine operator), who is already saddled with the high cost of
his mining operations,” she said
Usually, an accused miner would just plead guilty and post bail.
Often,
offending miners are prone to alleged extortion by the arresting officers from
the Philippine National Police (PNP).
“The miners
are struggling for recognition from the government by awarding them a Minahang
Bayan site in which they could operate legally,” says Aviado.
“Para hindi
na sila tawaging illegal (miners)”.
In their
operations, they either bore tunnels or dug pits where they extract gold ores,
which are processed in a facility in Barangay Sta Rosa.
But once
they got a tip that a raiding team would be out for them, they just abandon the
mining site and come back for it when the heat is off.
Since the
operations are illegal, miners are not monitored for the damage they create to
the environment.
Law
enforcers just launch raids to haul them off to the local jail and book them
for mining violations.
 |
Dirt diver… a
compressor miner comes out of the well with gold ores extracted from its
bottom.
Operations within a Minahang Bayan are closely monitored by the people from the MGB for any mining rules violations.
Minahang
Bayan areas are those where small-scale miners can operate legally, enabling
the government to better monitor and regulate their extractive activities while
helping promote the safety of these workers, protect the environment, and
generate revenues for the government.
Declaring
more Minahang Bayan areas nationwide increases the opportunity for the
government to track small-scale mining. But this is easier said than done.
The MB will
be subject to Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) which aims to identify,
predict, interpret, and communicate information on the changes in environmental
quality expected to arise from the proposed mining project.
Aviado said
there is little hope for Mambulao’s first proposed Minahang Bayan to get okay
as yet since its proponents are having a hard time with the required papers.
She said the
proposed Minahang Bayan site in Barangay Luklukan Sur covering 36 hectares is
struggling with its application with the Bureau of Mines and Geosciences (BMG)
for lack of documentation.
The other
proposed gold-rich MB sites are in barangays Luklukan Norte, Sta Rosa, San
Rafael, Larap, San Isidro, Nakalaya, Sta. Elena, and Bagong Bayan.
Aviado said
the groups applying for MB sites can’t just produce the technical papers needed
because people who do it are charging from Php1 million to Php1.3 million.
“It’s
outrageous because the gold operators are just ordinary people with not much
means to pay,” she said.
Usually, the
application for a Minahang Bayan site is worked by a group composed of small
gold operators with little capacity to pay for the technical documents.
“This is one
reason the five applications in Mambulao are stalled,” she said.
In a videoconference on Thursday night of the Minahang Bayan supporters from gold mining
provinces, they called on the government to speed up granting of awards to
Minahang Bayan sites to help ease the poverty of many small-scale gold
miners in the country.
Spearheaded
by the BAN Toxics, the virtual national assembly was attended by stakeholders
in the Philippine small-scale gold mining that included the small gold miners.
“We call for
the formalization of the ASGM sector to improve the working conditions of
small-scale miners, transition them out of mercury use to protect both their
health and the environment, and eliminate child labor in mining areas,"
BAN Toxics Executive Director Reynaldo San Juan said.
 |
| Panning for gold in the shallow waters of the bay. |
Along with the small-scale mining groups, the event was also attended by representatives from government agencies such as the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Mines and Geosciences Bureau, the Environmental Management Bureau, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, Department of the Interior and Local Government and the Commission on Human Rights.
The assembly
tackled issues plaguing the ASGM sector in the country, specifically the
proposed amendments to Executive Order 79 and DENR Administrative Order 92-34,
and the difficult acquisition process of obtaining a Minahang Bayan
certification and mining contract.
Aviado, who
attended the video conference, said that the small-scale gold mining industry
in Mambulao is “struggling”.
The 3,000 or
so displaced small-scale gold miners are having a hard time looking for other
sources of livelihood.
Many of them
are just part-time fishermen or farmers as they preferred working in the gold
mines.
Aviado said
the LGU helped some 100 gold miners’ families with livelihoods. However, only a
few of them kept up with their projects while the rest returned to gold-panning
and mining.
“They had
been in gold mining all their lives and a shift in livelihood was quite
difficult for them,” she said.
The local
government of Mambulao can only do little about the gold miners’ activities,
Aviado said.
Minahang
Bayan affairs have remained the jurisdiction of the provincial government
through the Provincial Mining Regulatory Board (PMRG), which carries out the
rules on Minahang Bayan operations.
“The LGU is
just deputized to do some functions.”
(This article first appeared in Opinyon.net)
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