DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/18 September) — The Aquino administration welcomes mining companies in the country but only if they are “responsible” ones, Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima said.
“We can’t allow the same situation in 2007 to repeat again, when mining operators wanting to take advantage of the high prices of gold in the world market started digging holes and left it afterwards, giving mining a bad name,” Purisima said in the regional economic managers briefing during the President’s visit to Davao Friday.
Some Mindanao leaders are worried over the impact of mining operations in their communities, among them Davao del Sur Diosdado Cagas, who said the mine tailings of the global mining firm Xstrata-Sagittarius Mines Inc.
are already being dumped in some areas in Kiblawan town.
“We’re worried that (the mine tailings) might contaminate our water source,” Cagas said.
Purisma said Canada has already developed the technology to address the adverse impact of large-scale mining on the environment and that the government will require mining firms to apply them in their operations.
“Mining is something that we support provided only that it is responsible,” he said.
In South Cotabato, the provincial board passed the Environment Code this year which banned open pit mining in the area.
Mindanao business and exporters called for the President’s “strong” and “unequivocal” support for both the mining and banana sectors in Mindanao, two industries which businessmen said could rake in billions of dollars for the country but which environment and church-based groups believe could displace communities and threaten the food security.
“The government should come up strongly with an unequivocal support for the industry,” said Vicente Lao, chair of the Mindanao Business Council (MBC).
He said that lately, the “ban on open pit mining, the Writ of Kalikasan and the constant call for the cancellation of the 1995 Philippine Mining Act” have been discouraging investors from going into mining.
Speaking for the banana industry, Stephen Antig, chair of the Philippine Exporters Confederation (PhilExport) in Southern Mindanao, said the banana industry’s “survival” was “threatened” last year when government supported the call for the ban on aerial spraying echoed by environment groups. Exporters argued that aerial spraying is the “only economical way” of controlling the sigatoka pests afflicting Philippine bananas but several farmers exposed to chemicals in banana plantations earlier came out to expose their horror stories in the banana farms. (Germelina Lacorte/MindaNews)
