Pantukan miners defiant amid danger

PANTUKAN, Compostela Valley—Whenever they hear the pitter-patter of rain falling at night, the women and children of Sitio Diat Palo could hardly sleep.

Diat Palo, a village of small-scale miners and their families, is beside Sitio Diat Uno, Barangay Napnapan, in Compostela Valley’s Pantukan town, where a landslide occurred on Jan. 5, burying alive a still undetermined number of people not far from where they lived. At least 30 bodies have been recovered.

Eden Madera, 35, recalled the day she heard the victims shouting for help throughout the night. “First, there was the loud screaming that gradually seemed to fade; and then, after a few seconds, the voices were gone. Everything was quiet. It was such an eerie feeling,” she said.

Psychosocial therapy

Volunteers of Balsa Mindanao arrived in Diat Palo, which faces the landslide-scarred portion of Diat Uno in the gold-rich Mt. Diwata mountain range, last month to conduct psychosocial therapy for the landslide survivors and neighboring communities.

It was raining hard when they came. Fog blanketed the cluster of shanties perched on the mountainside. Boot-shod children and adults huddled at stores, seeking shelter from the rain and mud.

Madera knew there were some things the people could not escape from. “Every time it rains, like now, I could no longer sleep,” she said, cuddling her daughter.

“Especially now that many of us are asked to leave,” she said. The mayor has issued an order to demolish their dwellings and ban people from living in areas identified as within the danger zone.

“If we only have other means in which to earn a living, we will not stick it out in a dangerous place like this,” said Rocelyn Caballero, a student, who left her mother in the town proper to stay with her elder brothers in the upland mining community.

Caballero couldn’t describe what she feels every time it rains. Her siblings would tell her, “Why can’t you sleep, why are you complaining?” She said she couldn’t help it.

Very high risk

Diat Palo was among the places classified as “very high risk” to landslides by the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) after conducting a study in June 2011, less than a year before the Diat landslide occurred. The study was commissioned after a landslide happened on Good Friday, April 21, 2011, in the adjacent Sitio Panganason in Barangay Kingking, also in Pantukan.

Led by Salvio Laserna, the supervising science research specialist, the study classified as “very high risk” those areas with steep to very steep slopes and underlain by weak materials, and where recent landslides, escarpments and tension cracks are present.

It was used as basis for an ordinance passed by the provincial board banning any form of habitation near mining areas in high risk areas in Pantukan, such as Napnapan, Kingking and Barangay Boringot, and in other towns.

The Jan. 5 landslide prompted Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo to call for the immediate relocation of houses near the mines and the enforcement of the no-habitation policy in the danger zones in Pantukan. He gave the local government 30 days to comply.

Repeated warnings

Despite the repeated warnings by local officials, the people have refused to leave the mining site.

“What are we going to do downtown?” asked miner Samson Perong, 47. “What do they want us to do, steal? Resort to a life of crime?”

Perong’s tunnel was among those the local government closed on Jan. 26 following Robredo’s order.

He said small-scale  miners were risking their lives because they had few chances to survive on a measly salary they would be getting from working in town. A person who did not finish school like him could not expect to get a decent paying job in the city, he said.

“The most that we can do would be to work for a banana plantation, which pays P150 a day,” he said. “Even if your wife is working, what do you think a P300-daily wage could bring to feed our family?” he asked.

He said working in the mines could get him at least P500 a day, and even bigger, if he could strike a gold vein. If he keeps a sharp eye, he could make P4,000 to P10,000 in five hours, depending on his luck, he said.

“I don’t have that chance working eight hours for a packing plant of a banana plantation,” he said.

Processing zones

Robredo also ordered the municipal government to identify areas to be used as mineral processing zones to relocate existing ball mills and reduce danger to lives near the mine sites. But Perong said this proposal would affect the operations of small-scale miners who must shoulder the extra cost of transporting the ores to the processing zones.

Perong voiced out the small-scale miners’ suspicion that declaring a danger zone in Diat could be a ploy to clear them out and allow the entry of large-scale mines.

According to the environment group Panalipdan, at least two large mining firms, Nationwide Development Corp. and Napnapan Mineral Resources Inc., have claims that crisscross the area of Pantukan and include Diat.

Edilberto Arreza, the regional director of MGB in Southern Mindanao, denied the small-scale miners’ allegation. “We are asking them to leave the area because it is already high risk to landslides,” he said.

‘Minahang Bayan’

He also said 80 hectares of Diat had already been declared “Minahang Bayan” (People’s Mines) through an executive order signed by the governor. With this declaration, “there’s no way for the large-scale mining firms to include it in their mining claim,” he said.

Up to now, Arreza lamented that no one had applied for small-scale mining contract.

At present, the MGB has approved at least 10 exploration permits and 21 mineral production sharing agreements in Southern Mindanao. Arreza described the region as being so endowed with gold that almost “anywhere we strike, there is gold.”

Almost two months after the landslide, and way beyond Robredo’s 30-day deadline, local leaders are still asking for more time to identify relocation areas. “Every time they delay, lives of small miners are at risk,” Arreza said.

Small-scale miners, whose tunnels were earlier padlocked, have defied the government order and resumed operations.

Caballero said despite her fears, she had to stay in Diat where her brothers earn P800 to P4,000 a day.

“Downtown, we are safer, yes, but we’re also hungry. Here, we’re in danger but at least, we have something to eat. That’s our reality,” she said.