It’s miners’ turn to rally in Surigao City

Angry at what they say are bureaucratic gridlock and anomalies that affect their mining jobs, about a thousand islanders last week stormed the regional office of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) here.

Led by their village leaders, residents of Masapilid Island in the mining town of Placer, Surigao del Norte, presented the MBG a petition calling for the extension of an exploration permit given to Bundok Mineral Resources Corp. (BMRC). The petition was addressed to President Aquino, MGB officials and Surigao del Norte Governor Sol Matugas.

BMRC’s exploration activities on its 1,480-hectare concession—covering some 80 percent of the island’s total land area—have ground to a halt since Oct. 3, following a temporary suspension order issued by MGB Regional Director Roger de Dios due to an expired permit to operate.

The suspension left some 100 workers out of work.

Inaction

But the Australian-owned mining firm said the MGB failed to act for almost two years on its application for exploration permit renewal.

Lakandula village chair Eutiquio Saga, one of the island’s six village leaders who led the rally, said it was clear that MGB failed to act on the BMRC application “in a timely manner” and that such “bureaucratic gridlock undermines one of the region’s job generators”—the mining industry.

“This is no joke for us because they (MGB officials) are playing with our jobs … with our lives,” Saga told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

At least 28 mining firms currently operate in Caraga Region, dubbed as the country’s mining capital, most of them involved in nickel and gold extraction. The mining industry accounts for some 60 percent of the region’s export, and employs thousands of workers.

Late last month, hundreds of residents from the famed “Nickel Island” of Nonoc also descended on the MGB office here to protest what they said was the “anomalous” refusal of its then director, Alilo Ensomo, to grant nickel operator Shuley Mine ore transport permits despite two separate court decisions validating the firm’s operations and ordering the agency to issue the permits. Ensomo’s defiance of the court orders left some 1,400 Nonoc workers jobless for 14 months.

Mind-boggling

BMRC signed a joint venture with the San Manuel Mining Corp. (SMMC) in 2010 to operate the Masapilid Mineral Production Sharing Agreement (MPSA) No. 004-91-XIII. Each MPSA is granted by law a maximum of nine years for exploration activities, which SMMC had exhausted prior to BMRC’s entry.

Documents obtained from MGB show that from December of 2010 to April of 2011, BMRC submitted requirements to support its appeal for a third exploration renewal application. MGB’s central office elevated the company’s application on March 23, 2011, to its mother agency, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

Last August, however, the MGB central office said BMRC’s application has been denied, taking the agency a year and five months to decide. It anchored its decision on BMRC’s failure to submit its declaration of mining project feasibility (DMPF).

BMRC filed a motion for reconsideration on Sept. 21, 2012, requesting that it be given an extension of two years so that it could finally submit a DMPF. Before the motion could be acted upon, however, the agency’s regional office issued the suspension on October 3.

De Dios said BMRC and SMMC would be barred from any exploration activity in the contract area “until such time that all requirements for the DMPF shall have been complied with and approval of extension of exploration period shall be granted by the DENR secretary.”

Saga found the bureaucratic process “unnecessarily tedious and mind-boggling.”

“All we understand are gut issues—we can’t eat all these technicalities and legalities,” an exasperated Saga said. “All we want is a more responsive bureaucracy because our jobs are on the line here.”

De Dios, the newly installed MGB chief, said BMRC’s appeal for exploration extension may still be granted by the DENR secretary.

“Whether they (BMRC) go back to exploration, it’s now in the hands of the secretary, who has the sole discretion whether to allow further exploration,” De Dios said.

Masapilid Island, divided between Placer and Taganaan towns, has at least 5,000 residents, most of whom rely on fishing as a primary source of livelihood.

Most of the local fishermen, however, use fine mesh nets to compensate for the increasingly dwindling fish supply.