Kasibu to decide mining bid

Kasibu to decide mining bid
By Florante Solmerin, Northern Luzon Bureau
The Manila Times August 2, 2005
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2005/aug/02/yehey/prov/20050802pro9.html

KASIBU: The fate of the planned open-pit and block-caving mining operations in the mineral-rich Barangay Didipio by the Australia-owned Climax-Arimco Mining Corp. (CAMC) will be decided by the local government of Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya when members of the municipal board convenes during their regular session on August 8.
In a meeting with the Didipio council together with the officers and members of the Didipio Earth Savers Multipurpose Association (Desama) here, Mayor Romeo Tayaban of Kasibu sured the Didipio folks that majority of the members of the municipal board will reject CAMC’s mining bid.

The barangay council submitted a unanimous resolution rejecting mining and urging the members of the municipal board to reject the same the plan of CAMC to mine their place.

“Don’t be fooled by the black propaganda of promining advocates that the Sangguniang Bayan will give an endorsement to CAMC’s mining bid in Barangay Didipio. Majority of the Sangguniang Bayan members are against mining,” Tayaban told the officers and members of Desama in a meeting here.

Tayaban also scoffed at news reports “obviously guided by the company” and the continuous propaganda by a handful of people who were not his constituents that some members of the Sanggunian will throw their “yes vote” to the project.

“Even when I was still a vice mayor, I never recalled a single instance the Sangguniang Bayan had issued an endorsement to the mining project even if our mayor then was promining. And that position of the SB remains the same up to this time while I’m the incumbent mayor,” he said.

Environment Undersecretary Deinrado Dimalibot had pointed out that the government will not issue any mining tenement to any mining prospectors in a particular ancestral land unless it has the consent of the parties involved.

Dimalibot further stressed the importance of the provisions of the Indigenous People’s Rights Act of 1997 of whether or not a mining permit would be issued until and unless the involved parties, IP’s, were properly consulted.

CAMC, an Australia-owned mining firm, was eyeing to extract gold and copper in Didipio in mining operations in a 12 to 14 years period. The Ramos administration granted the company a Financial Technical Assistance Agreement in 1994, a year before the Mining Act of 1995, or Republic Act 7942, was enacted into law. The area to be affected covers 37,000 hectares and straddles in the Mamaparang mountain range in the boundaries of Nueva Vizcaya and Quirino.

However Mining Act’s mandatory 10 percent annual area relinquishment reduced the area to 21,465 hectares.

Climax has a surface mineral extraction area of 325 hectares in Didipio, portions of which was also found in Barangay Dingasan, Cabarroguis, Quirino.

Antonio Dincog, barangay chair of Didipio, together with his councilors and the officers and members of Desama, praised Tayaban’s steadfastness against large-scale mining which they said would only endanger the booming upland agriculture of their place particularly their citrus industry.

“We’ve been informed that our governor, Luisa Lloren Cuaresma, herself doesn’t want large-scale mining to operate here in the province. We really appreciate the position of the governor. However, we’re appealing to her to abolish the so-called Mine Rehabilitation Fund Committee [MRFC],” Dincog said.

The MRFC, formed in October last year, sets aside an initial amount of P5 million for the immediate compensation of the affected communities in Didipio once mining commence.

Cuaresma, during the first meeting of the regional development council early this year, told the body and the environment department to spare Nueva Vizcaya from large-scale mining.

The regional body had in the past repeatedly rejected CAMC’s mining bid in Kasibu.

The Catholic Bishops of Northern Luzon (CBNL) in May renewed their opposition against the government’s bid in revitalizing the Philippine mining industry and in a statement called upon the respective episcopal jurisdictions to vigorously fight large-scale mining “which endangers the strategic sources of livelihood of the present generation, the environment and mother earth’s future generations.”

The CBNL is composed of Archbishop Oscar Cruz of Dagupan-Lingayen; Archbishop Diosdado Talamayan of Tuguegarao City; Bishop Carlito Cenzon of Baguio City; Bishop Cornelio Wigwigan of Bontoc-Lagawe; Bishop Artemio Rillera of Bangued, Abra; Bishop Jesus Cabrera of Alaminos; Fr. Samuel Banayat, administrator of the of San Fernando, La Union; Bishop Sergio Utleg of Ilagan; Bishop Ramon Villena of Bayombong; Bishop Edmundo Abayan of Nueva Segovia; Bishop Ernesto Salgado of Laoag City and Bishop Prudencio Andaya of Tabuk.