BUSINESS MIRROR
SUNDAY, 08 JANUARY 2012 22:18 JONATHAN L. MAYUGA
ENVIRONMENTAL activists chided the government for blaming the death of more than 50 people on small-scale mining activities in Pantukan, Compostela Valley, saying the two disasters could have been prevented had the government acted when a similar disaster struck the same area last year.
They said the more destructive large-scale mining operations, which were granted permits to operate and cause environmental degradation, should also be blamed for the tragedy and shoulder expenses, at least for the rehabilitation and relocation of mining-affected families.
The group said the government, despite its own warning, failed to implement or even come up with a program, such as a housing plan, for the relocation of those at risk of being swept away by floods or buried alive underneath tons of mud during heavy downpours or in case of an earthquake. This makes the government and the mining companies equally liable, they said.
Kalikasan, the People’s Network for the Environment (Kalikasan-PNE), said heavy rains and earthquakes loosened the soil that eventually caused the landslide that left 14 dead, 14 injured and eight missing in the same area on April 22 last year.
“It seems the government failed again to prevent tragedies, particularly in disaster-prone areas like Pantukan and the recently hit Cagayan de Oro, Dumaguete and Iligan cities in spite of many experiences and scientific studies that forecast these possible disasters. Reports show that both tragic incidents were triggered by heavy rainfall and earthquakes,” Clemente Bautista, national coordinator of Kalikasan PNE said.
In a statement, the group said the government should have caused the immediate relocation of those living in the areas after the first incident, especially that it was among many areas identified as prone to geological hazards such as flash floods and landslides by the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) as early as 2009, when it was preparing its much-publicized geohazard map.
Kalikasan PNE said the government’s reaction to the Pantukan landslide last year was to blame small-scale miners for the tragedy, claiming that unregulated SSM activities caused the environmental degradation and aggravated the topographical vulnerability of the area.
The government even proposed the forced relocation of mining communities out of Pantukan, it said.
“The Aquino administration’s broken-record strategy of blaming small-scale miners has failed to convince them [victims] to relocate from Pantukan, despite their leading a very dangerous and hazardous job. They have no choice as the government has given them neither resettlement areas nor livelihood alternatives. President Aquino has literally made small-scale mining communities stuck between a rock and a hard place,” Bautista lamented.
Pantukan, the group said, is host to the Russel Mines and Minerals, a US-based mining company conducting exploration activities for open-pit mining. This should be enough reason not to blame small-scale mining activities alone as the reason for the disaster, the group said.
Mount Diwalwal has long been targeted for the takeover of large-scale and foreign-funded corporations.
Xstrata, one of the three biggest mining corporations in the country, aims to massively operate open-pit mining in four provinces in Mindanao, the group said.
In Davao City, Talaingod and Bukidnon, four mining permits threaten the sustainability of the Pantaron Mountain ranges. These are besides the fact that legal commercial logging continues to rape the remaining forests in Mindanao.
Meanwhile, the Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya said the government should not charge victims of Typhoon Sendong on December 16 last year for the housing project that the National Housing Authority (NHA) plans to construct in Cagayan de Oro City.
According to Pamalakaya, the proposal to charge every family of P200,000 for a house which they would avail themselves of in the 84-hectare housing project of NHA is tantamount to sheer profiteering and taking advantage of the people’s misery.
The government housing agency is planning to build 3,000 houses for the victims of the pre-Christmas tragedy that sent tens of thousands of people in the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan homeless and penniless.
IN PHOTO -- THE January 5 landslide in Pantukan, Compostela Valley. The slide started at Sitio Diatpalo Uno and Dos and cascaded 350 meters down, bringing with it all 62 houses in its path.
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