Mine industry leaders push bill creating new dep’t

Ore mined from the tunnels of Benguet province are transported through a conveyor to a production area where workers
extract gold and copper. —EV ESPIRITU

BAGUIO CITY—Mine industry leaders discussed a proposal for a new mining code that would create a Department of Mines and enforce a provision stipulating that all mineral lands, including those covered by ancestral domains, are inalienable and owned by the state.

The proposal came on the heels of a perceived threat from the anti-mine stance of a Cabinet official that was expressed in several papers presented at this year’s national mine safety and environment conference held here last week.

Mining executives interacted with mine engineer Graciano Calanog Jr., who proposed the revival of an industry-backed mine code “to ensure that government policy on mining and the environment is properly balanced and not tilted in favor of the environment.”

Many measures have been sponsored in Congress to replace Republic Act No. 7942 or the Philippine Mining Act of 1995.

Calanog said the industry is seeking a lawmaker to sponsor the draft mining code, which would make a mine department the sole authority in regulating all mining activities in the country.

By creating a single mine regulator, Calanog said it would resolve the conflict created by laws that allow the Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) and local governments to issue mining permits.

The proposal also seeks to require the new agency to be run by “officials with mining credentials,” he said. “These days, anybody can be appointed director [of the MGB],” he added.

The proposed code may become controversial, however, because it would no longer honor the ancestral domain titles issued to indigenous peoples if their lands are classified as mineral lands.

The constitutionality of Republic Act No. 8371 (Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997) was questioned in the Supreme Court, owing to its ancestral land provisions that supposedly deprive the state of its ownership over minerals and other natural resources.

The petition, however, was dismissed in 2000.

The proposed code needs to assert “that mineral lands are inalienably and owned by the state and not by the indigenous peoples nor by local governments,” Calanog said.

Former Science Undersecretary Graciano Yumul said the mining industry should exert more effort “in giving facts and details about the industry to disabuse the public about the imagined perils of mining.”

“We hear the secretary of environment saying climate is changing and we are in a geohazardous area so we should limit mining if not totally eradicate mining. That is a wrong notion,” said Yumul, now executive vice president for geology, exploration and operations and executive director of Apex Mining Corp.

“We are dealing with poor mining communities, mining makes people poor and we know that is wrong,” he added.

In his keynote address at the symposium, Eulalio Austin, president and chief executive officer of Philex Mining Corp., said the idea of responsible mining “might not be grasped or understood by the general public.” “We go to town proclaiming ourselves as responsible miners, and yet its meaning is lost to the public we wish to affirm or convert,” he said.

“The Philippines is known to be a country with world class gold deposits. But it does not mean anything because unless these resources are mined, it would not contribute to the wealth of the country. We should be able to communicate that the mining industry can also help generate wealth for this country,” he said.

“The legacy of the mining industry rest on the leaders of the industry now. We have to communicate, relate, convey… Unless we communicate our message, this industry may not survive,” Austin said. —VINCENT CABREZA