TUNNELMEN Benguet province, the host of the country’s pioneer mines, is also home to a thriving small-scale mine trade populated by indigenous Filipinos whose ancestors panned gold before the American colonial government controlled the Philippines. This photo was taken in 2012 at the Antamok pocket mine in Itogon town. —RICHARD BALONGLONG
BAGUIO CITY—Pocket or small-scale miners are pushing for changes in the People’s Small-scale Mining Act (Republic Act No. 7076) to allow them to dig up all types of minerals found in accredited Minahang Bayan (People’s Mines) to help them recover from income loss amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gil Indino, president of the National Coalition of Small-Scale Miners in the Philippines, on Friday said over 500,000 small-scale miners in the country want the law to be more explicit about granting them the opportunity to extract every mineral that would put food on their tables.
Indino expressed the small-scale miners’ aspiration during the coalition’s third general assembly here that was attended by its members from the provinces of Benguet, Davao de Oro, South Cotabato, Camarines Norte and Agusan del Sur.
The call was backed by the government’s technical experts in the Soccsksargen region, said Efren Carido, the regional director of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB), noting that the areas to be opened up to small-scale miners could include iron deposits “which are needed for industrialization.”
The region, formerly called Central Mindanao, is composed of the provinces of South Cotabato, Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani and the cities of General Santos, Cotabato, Koronadal, Tacurong and Kidapawan.
Mineralized areas
According to Section 11 of Executive Order No. 79, which was issued in 2012 by the late President Benigno Aquino III to jumpstart reforms in the metals industry, “small-scale mining shall not be applicable for metallic minerals except gold, silver and chromite, as provided for in RA 7076.”
The law, which took effect in 1991 under the administration of Aquino’s mother, the late Corazon Aquino, defines “mineralized areas” as lands “with naturally occurring mineral deposits of gold, silver, chromite, kaolin, silica, marble, gravel, clay and (similar types of) mineral resources.”
The coalition’s set of proposed amendments and new provisions were scheduled to be tackled at the assembly’s plenary on Friday night, said Arlene Honrade, a member of environmental group BAN Toxics and who serves as secretary general of the coalition.
Honrade said the proposal would be transmitted to senators and congressmen who offered to sponsor the measure.
Skills, expertise
She acknowledged that some minerals may require specialized skills and that part of their proposal is for MGB to make their experts and resources available to all Minahang Bayan, particularly in conducting geological scoping and feasibility studies, so pocket miners can have access to commercial loans.
Currently, many of the small-scale mining sector’s financiers belong to the black market, which absorbs most of the gold generated by small-scale mines that should have been sold to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), as required by RA 7076, said Honrade.
She said BAN Toxics has encouraged miners to sell to the BSP and help “build the country’s gold reserves.”
The most fundamental changes to the law, which the coalition is advancing, are the inclusion of occupational safety and health features, and a prescription banning children and adolescents from being employed in the tunnels, Honrade said.
She said they would also push for a ban on dangerous chemicals like mercury, which was instituted in EO 79, and a redefinition of small-scale mining.
Legitimize
Although artisanal miners (workers who still use hammers and mortars to break through rocks) still exist, most small-scale workers have been operating with heavy equipment in the last few decades, said Alfredo Genetiano, chief of the MGB mine management division in the Cordillera.
Some pocket miners were former employees of large-scale mines and were familiar with modern extraction methods, said the MGB official, who said he used to be a pocket miner.
The coalition’s main objective is for the government to legitimize all small-scale mining activities, which is not a commercial venture but their livelihood, the miners said.
Throughout the lockdown and subsequent quarantines in 2020 and 2021, most businesses were closed, so some people in Mindanao turned to pocket mining just to get by, said one of the mine leaders at the news conference. —VINCENT CABREZA