APPARENTLY, Jose Panganiban Mayor Ricarte Padilla has found a friend in
CamSur Governor LRay Villafuerte.
Although the two local officials have no direct consultation or
communication between them, they both agree that the local government units
(LGUs) should be consulted by the national government agencies such as the
Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), the Mining and
Geogscience Bureau and the Environment Management Bureau (EMB) regarding:
1) The regulation and control of
any mining activities within their respective jurisdiction;
2) Equitable sharing of
revenues; and
3) The assurance on the
environment viability of mining operations.
Villafuerte, who is the vice-president of the League of Provinces of
the Philippines, was reacting to a new Executive Order (EO) awaiting President
Noynoy Aquino’s signature, which ignored the municipal governments when it
mandated the creation of a provincial mining regulatory board (PMRB) solely
presided by the provincial government.
In short, the local government unit (LGU), which hosts a mining
resource has no seat in the board and has no role in regulating and overseeing
mining operations and gets no share in the mining revenues from operations
within its jurisdiction.
In a statement that appeared recently in the regional newspaper Bicol
Mail, Villafuerte said he “only wants assurance that the environment would be
protected by the mining operations”.
The three concerns raised by the CamSur governor sit squarely with that
of Padilla’s.
As of now, there are many illegal gold mining operations going on in
the municipality of Jose Panganiban.
A number of them have the blessings of mining rights claimants who
deliberately sat on their “property” in violation of the mandate of their
mining claims -- which is to develop them -- and who, instead, allowed
small-time gold operators-financiers to extract the wealth from their mining
claims on royalty basis.
But since the JP-LGU has no power to check or stop their activities, it
can only watch helplessly the on-going degradation of the environment within
the mining sites.
And the permit holders are answerable only to the one who issued them –
the provincial government, and in this case the office of CamNorte gov Edgardo
A Tallado.
It is well known all over CamNorte that the rich gold mining districts
in Jose Panganiban, Labo, Sta Elena and Paracale have remained a rich milking
cow for the powers-that-be in province.
A case in point is the recent sacking of CamNorte Senior Supt Joselito
Esquivel as head of the CamNorte Police Provincial Office (PPO) because he
“failed to enforce a moratorium on small-scale mining in the province” that
Interior and Local Government Sec Jesse Robredo has ordered.
The moratorium was prompted by a series of accidents in the gold mining
districts in Mindanao, in Paracale and elsewhere where illegal operations are
going on.
We can easily speculate on why Esquivel ignored the DILG order.
The sacked police officer was replaced by Police Supt Jose L Capinpin
as PPO officer-in-charge.
And it was not surprising to read in the news that the provincial
governor Edgar A Tallado has “lamented” Esquivel’s sacking, saying that “it’s a
political suicide” to stop small-scale mining in the province, which involves
some 10,000 families who depend their livelihood on it.
We can interpret it this way: the illegal operators are voters and that
their votes are precious, especially in the coming local elections. But then,
in order to allow them to operate in violation of the DILG moratorium, there
should be a trade-off.
And it is here where the million peso question pops. Agreeing, both
parties should be happy.
The DILG moratorium order runs counter to Tallado’s discretion to issue
out mining permits whenever he pleases and who would surely frown on
Villafuerte’s stand to give the municipal governments – in particular the
JP-LGU -- a say in the regulation and control of such extractive activities.
Padilla and Tallado are fiercely on the opposing sides of the political
fence in CamNorte.
Right now, LGUs, in particular the government of Jose Panganiban, can
only endorse to the DENR, EMB and MGB a mining operators’ request for ECC, or
the so-called Environmental Compliance Certificate (ECC).
This document certifies that the prospective miner has complied with
all the requirement set by the DENR on the aspect of environment based on the
independent evaluation or assessment carried out by the LGU on the upcoming
mining operations.
The JP-LGU can’t afford to be remiss on its job – any screw up in the
miner’s operations after getting an ECC would surely affect the community and
its environment. It would also be a big slap in the face of the local chief
executive.
Villafuerte, in agreement with Padilla’s stance of the LGUs supervisory
power, has pitched that mining operations should be guided and regulated so
that the efforts of the LGUs to preserve the environment will be safeguarded.
“The local government units
would have a say in regulating them and local government units should have a
fair share of the revenues that are generated by the government on such
operations and the population would derive substantial benefits,” Villafuerte
said.
As it is, Villafuerte has a particular bias towards the protection of
the environment.
He has been planting trees across his province, earning him two world
records in the Guinness Book of World Records. The recent one was achieved by
planting 1,009,019 mangove trees in one hour along the coast of Ragay Gulf and
the first world record was for planting 64,000 trees in only 15 minutes, which
eclipsed India’s record of 50,033 trees planted in one hour.
Padilla, on his own, has initiated tree-planting in the watersheds
around two dams which supply water to the community and has continued to chase
illegal loggers operating in the municipality.
As the local chief executive, he has been appalled by the gradual
degradation of waters of Mambulao Bay caused by indiscriminate mining
activities in the municipality’s gold district.
In fact, small-scale miners are operating right in the shallow water of
the bay just close to the town’s shoreline, polluting the water with silt and
mud and making it brownish.
But Padilla can’t do anything pro-active about this. All he can do is
inform the concerned national agencies about the infraction in his very own
territory. So far, nothing has been done about it.
The good news is that, being the No. 2 honcho in the provincial
governors’ club, Villafuerte wields awesome powers and influence to sway all
like-minded governors from the north down to the south to rally behind the
municipal governments’ bid to have a say in the running of the country’s mining
industry, especially so if such operation is being carried out right in the own
backyard.
Villafuerte said that his position for responsible mining is shared by
majority of the governors.
President Aquino, therefore, should not play deaf-and-dumb to the pleas
of mineral resource hosts – the municipalities and their respective government
– to play a vital role in developing their mineral wealth, instead of just
being fence-sitters and on-lookers to whatever development unfolding right
before them.
--AP Hernandez
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