Operations vs illegal small-scale miners in central Mindanao relaunched
COTABATO CITY — The police and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-12 (DENR-12) relaunched their operations against small-scale illegal gold miners in the hinterland borders of two mineral-rich Central Mindanao towns.
Radio stations in the cities of Koronadal, General Santos, Cotabato and Tacurong on Monday morning stated that the DENR-12, the Police Regional Office-12 and local executives will stop the clandestine small-scale gold mining in mountain ranges in Tampakan in South Cotabato and in Columbio in Sultan Kudarat, after waters flowing downstream from two rivers that spring from both areas became murky last week.
Experts in the DENR-12 were quoted in radio reports as saying that they are still investigating assertions by local residents that soil dug from small illegal mine pits was swept down by heavy rains early on, causing the discoloration of the waters in both rivers.
Leaders of the Blaan communities in tribal domains in Tampakan, estimated to have at least $200 billion worth of copper and gold deposits based on studies by geologists in the DENR central office and mining engineers in Europe, said they will support the anti-illegal mining crackdown by their provincial governor, Reynaldo S. Tamayo, Jr., the South Cotabato Provincial Police Office and the Police Regional Office-12.
Mr. Tamayo said there are indeed small-scale gold mining operations in Tampakan. “There is no legal large-scale copper and gold mining yet in Tampakan. What we have there are illegal, small-scale mining operations,” he told reporters.
An appointed tribal representative to the Tampakan municipal council, the Blaan chieftain Domingo N. Collado, said they want an absolute ban on what they call “banlas,” or small-scale gold mining operations in their ancestral lands in their municipality.
“We want all of these stopped,” Mr. Collado said. — John Felix M. Unson
