Tourism plan puts gov’t mining venture on hold

BAGUIO CITY—A government plan to develop the Batong Buhay Gold Mines Inc. in Kalinga may be put on hold because of a proposal to convert sections of the mine into a tourism zone, Kalinga Gov. Jocel Baac said on Monday.

Baac said the government began consultations this week to determine which sections of Pasil town, where the mine is located, should be exempt from as prescribed by President Aquino’s mining policy.

Executive Order No. 79, issued in 2012, bans mining in tourism development areas, part of the President’s reforms in mine industry policies which grant more protection to the environment and regulate the exploitation of mineral resources.

On May 17, Aquino signed Republic Act No. 10561 (An Act Declaring Kalinga as a Tourism Development Area or TDA).

Baac said Pasil serves as a staging area for Kalinga’s popular white-water rafting tours. But he said the town is still conducting an inventory of tourist destinations that operating the Batong Buhay mines would affect.

The Philippine Mining Development Corp. (PMDC) was supposed to begin exploration work in Batong Buhay and had shipped in equipment as early as February.

But a divided Balatoc tribe, which has applied for an ancestral domain title over the area, has prevented PMDC from proceeding.

PMDC (formerly the Natural Resources Mining Development Corp.) is tasked with rehabilitating and reactivating mine property under its custody. The Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) said Batong Buhay’s reserve runs up to 86.9 million metric tons of mineral ore.

According to the PMDC website, the copper and gold-producing Batong Buhay Mines, which began operating in 1934, was shut down during World War II. It was sequestered by the government in 1979 over its original owner’s loan defaults.

The government initially commissioned Philex Mining Corp. to run the mine, until Batong Buhay was acquired by the Asset Privatization Trust in 1986 and was assigned to the PMDC in 2006, the company website said.

In 2009, PMDC entered into a joint operating agreement with the Balatoc tribe, represented at the time by Alfredo Malannag Sr. and Washington Bakidan. The agreement allowed the villagers to operate the mines covering 492 hectares.

But PMDC was confronted by a leadership dispute over the cooperative, which the Balatoc tribe had formed to develop the mine, Baac said.

On June 20, a faction of the tribe represented by Victor Gumisa, filed a complaint at the MGB and the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, claiming that PMDC had proceeded to explore the mine without their permission and without government permits.

Neither agency has resolved the complaint.

But PMDC’s bigger worry should be the Kalinga TDA, Baac said. “We have notified PMDC about our consultations,” he said. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon