Sylvia Miclat

Pantukan is also a first class municipality that hosts the Kingking gold-rich copper porphyry deposit and is said to be the world's largest, undeveloped, advanced stage copper-gold deposits. Initial studies show that the Kingking copper-gold deposit is capable of producing a total of two billion pounds of copper concentrate, 466 million pounds of copper cathode, four million ounces of gold, four million ounces of silver with total estimated value of US$4 billion, requiring an initial capital investment of US$531 million.

This latest tragedy is not really "new" news, but it is a persistent occurrence especially in ComVal. One can easily Google© reported mine collapses in the area in the recent past and continuously read the statistics on the number of people killed and injured, mostly poor small-scale miners and their families.

Landslides after heavy rains and cave-ins are common in small-scale mining areas in Southern Mindanao where miners work with ordinary tools to extract gold ore. Around 6,000 miners are doing unregulated small-scale mining through underground tunneling or hard rock mining. Most are undocumented non-residents - poor migrants attracted by the lure of gold and driven by limited opportunities for work, a not uncommon situation for poor uneducated Filipinos.

In September 2009, after another landslide incident, the ComVal local government ordered a stop to mining operations in Maragusan town, citing geological and environmental hazards. Governor Arturo Uy assured that the closure is temporary and mining operations may be resumed a month after. The Mines and Geosciences Bureau identified the 234 hectares of gold fields in Barangay Pamintaran as geologically hazardous, with wide, deep cracks that could cause landslides and cave-ins during heavy rains.

The local government promised to monitor the implementation order, conduct an inventory of existing tunnels, and regulate operations in case the stoppage order is lifted. We wonder what happened to these commitments.

Just last month, on 12 March, one was killed and five injured as a "bar down" occurred n Sitios Lumanggang, Binutaan, Campo Dos, and Tiogdang in the same area, Barangay Kingking in Pantukan. The avalanche occurred after heavy rains and the contractor and technical operator provided hospitalization for the injured and gave cash to the family of the dead.

Six days after, on 18 March, at 3:00 pm, two miners were killed in Barangay Golden Valley in Mabini when a tunnel collapsed. The victims were digging inside the Arbanes mine shaft when they accidentally bore a hole on the adjoining tunnel which was filled with water.

The DENR Secretary, the provincial governor, the Pantukan mayor have now announced that mining in these geologically hazardous areas will no longer be allowed. The communities of small-scale miners in the area are worried. The contractors allowed to operate in an adjacent area are assuring their investors that their operations are in a different area. National government is also saying that the small-scale miners must be organized into cooperatives so that government assistance can be properly channeled, as stated in the People's Small-Scale Mining Act. But there are small-scale miners who fear that this might be a further way to extort from them. As a country, we also have limited information as to how much minerals are extracted, as the ore is mined, processed, and sold. The use of mercury and child labor, the health and safety hazards are also urgent concerns that need to be addressed.

As we continue to waffle on the matter of small-scale mining, national attention will again only emerge when media reports another round of tragedies and how many and how heavy the gold medals are given to school children during graduation ceremonies in ComVal towns and barangays.

For those who perished and were injured last Good Friday and Earth Day in Pantukan, ESSCNews offers its deepest condolences and earnest hope that Philippine society will work for change and show the care and action that must be taken.