REPRESENTATIVES of three barangays in Tampakan, South Cotabato and the Sagittarius Mines Incorporated forged in Koronadal City last week their five-year compact on joint implementation of humanitarian projects for the local Blaan communities. — PHILIPPINE STAR/JOHN FELIX M. UNSON

KORONADAL CITY — Three areas of a highland town populated by thousands of indigenous Blaans stand to benefit from a five-year humanitarian program forged between their barangay governments and a private firm soon to explore copper and gold in their municipality.

Blaan tribal leader Domingo N. Collado, indigenous people’s representative to the Tampakan municipal council, said in a local radio interview on Wednesday that barangay chairpersons of Pula Bato, Danlag and Tablu signed a memorandum of agreement (MoA) with Sagittarius Mines Incorporated (SMI) last week.

The MoA contains details of a collaboration deal for SMI’s multi-million Social Development and Management Program (SDMP) for local communities in the next five years.

The SMI was contracted by Malacañang to operate, starting next year, the Tampakan Copper-Gold Project with written clearances from Blaan tribal leaders from the central office the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-12.

Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño Mendoza, chairperson of the Regional Development Council 12, said experts from the DENR’s central office and geologists from Europe and Australia had placed at no less than $200 billion (P11 trillion) the value of copper and gold deposits in Blaan ancestral lands in Tampakan in separate surveys in the past 10 years.

The Philippine Mining Act of 1995 compels mining companies to fund socio-economic, health, education and infrastructure projects in host communities.

Barangay Chairpersons Neil Ryan T. Escobillo of Pula Bato, Judith J. Magbanua of Danlag, Gloria P. Magbanua of Tablu and Julius M. Clarete, who is SMI’s community development superintendent, signed the SDMP agreement during a simple rite in a commercial function facility in this city on March 5, according to Mr. Collado.

Mr. Escobillo is the president of the League of Barangay Chairpersons in South Cotabato province that covers all barangays in this city and the 10 municipalities in the province. — John Felix M. Unson

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