A day after two miners drowned in a seaside mining pit in Paracale town in this province, Governor Edgardo Tallado asked the police to shut down all illegal mining operations there amid some misgivings.
Tallado said he had to make the hard decision to stop “dangerous” mining operations in Camarines Norte as thousands of people depend on small-scale mining as their primary source of livelihood.
“It’s like killing them. We cannot sufficiently provide for them once they are cut off from mining. We need help from the national government,” he told the Inquirer in an interview on Monday.
But it has to be done, he said, particularly after the latest accident in Paracale, a gold-rich town 27 kilometers northwest of Daet, the capital.
Senior Superintendent Joselito Esquivel, provincial police chief, said he immediately sent his men to Paracale to enforce the order.
At about 5 a.m. on Sunday, two gold miners drowned after seawater rushed into a mining pit they dug close to shore in Barangay (village) Palanas. They were identified as Christian Banal and Budo Villanueva.
The two were engaged in compressor mining, an extraction method that is disallowed by authorities.
Miners engaged in this type of mining use air compressors for breathing underwater while searching for gold ores in water-filled mining pits or among coral reefs under the sea. In Paracale, they usually operate from offshore floating structures.
Tallado said the provincial government had been trying to stop compressor mining, but some miners managed to keep their operations going.
Small-scale mining is widespread in Paracale and in Jose Panganiban and Labo towns. Gold-panning, which uses toxic mercury in extracting gold, is also prevalent in Camarines Norte.
In January, the provincial government canceled the permits of all small-scale mining operations in Camarines Norte, one of the areas in the country with sizable minerals, especially gold deposits.
In July last year, two miners in Labo died after their tunnel collapsed during a downpour while they were chipping gold ores.