Tuesday, November 27, 2007 Speak out: Foreign mining By Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr.
THE government should look into the background of foreign mining firms before allowing them to operate in the country to ensure that they will not bring ecological disasters and not frustrate the promise of mining ventures as a source of investments, job opportunities and wealth for the nation.
Foreign mining firms that have been reported for failing to comply with environment laws and regulations in the countries where they operate are now eyeing multi-million mining projects spread across Cordillera and Mindanao.
The Arroyo administration considers foreign investments in the mining industry as a major factor in fuelling economic growth. But whatever economic gains that will be derived from mining could not compensate for the destruction of vegetation, pollution of rivers and other water sources, and displacement of indigenous communities that it may cause.
The world’s largest mining firms — many of which are notorious in other parts of the globe — will bring this country into a state of calamity and will unleash an environmental tsunami that would engulf the people.
Mining, indeed, produces money for the people who work the mines, the owners of the mines and other people by way of the so-called “trickle down theory.”
Nevertheless, the best information we get is that far from benefiting the country as a whole, mining has devastated it.
BHP Billiton, one of the foreign mining giants that have come to the country, reportedly dumped 80,000 tons of rock mine tailings filled with toxic heavy metals such as copper, zinc, cadmium and lead directly into the Fly and Ok Tedi rivers in Papua New Guinea.
Another giant mining firm operating in the country, Anglo-American, has an apparently notorious record in “open and strip mining” in the more than 100 years of its existence.
There is much wisdom in the recent statement of Caloocan Bishop Deogracias Iniguez that there is a need to reassess the cost and the benefits of mining in the Philippines before the government opens the doors to more mining firms.
