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Friday, May 13, 2005
Maxey: All that glitters
By Ram Maxey
Bar None
"If we go by accounts of bloody rivalry among the miners in Mt. Diwalwal over eight grams of gold per ton of ore, this new find in Kalinawan, Manay can spell trouble and lots of it."
"All that glitters is not gold, often have we heard that told..."
I RECALLED those opening lines of a poem back in my high school days after reading the column of Ramon Tulfo in yesterday's issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer in which my namesake and fellow-Dabawenyo (I'm from Baganga, Mon is from Manay, two towns in Davao Oriental) wrote about the new gold rush site in Sitio Kalinawan, Manay.
According to him, he went to the place way up in the mountains to check on stories about the discovery of gold there. After a long mountainbike ride (tandem) and trekking to the site, what he saw more than confirmed the stories. There were about 3,000 small-scale miners busy digging away some 200 dogholes that would eventually end up as tunnels.
Is there gold in dem dar hills? He found out that not only is there gold in Kalinawan's mountainsides, the site can produce anywhere from 70 to 100 grams of gold per ton of ore, which puts to shame the measly eight grams per ton in Mt. Diwalwal, Compostela Valley province. If we go by accounts of bloody rivalry among the miners in Mt. Diwalwal over eight grams of gold per ton of ore, this new find in Kalinawan, Manay can spell trouble and lots of it.
By the way, the Visayan word kalinawan translates to "peace" or "peaceful" in English. With 3,000 eager-beaver miners already in place, and more to come, they may have to change the name Kalinawan to something else that denotes mayhem. The glitter of gold can attract the best and the worst of mankind--and in the search for gold anything goes.
Already in place, according to Tulfo's account, are 28 ball mills processing an average of 30 tons of ore a day. The three biggest belong to people close to Governor Elena Palma Gil--her son Jaypet, Provincial Board member Dodo Miones, and Association of Barangay Captains (ABC) president Primo Lumando.
When the governor formed Task Force Kalinawan and issued an order last April 15 stopping mining operations in Kalinawan, the three biggest ball mills never stopped grinding. Ironically, Manay Mayor Manolo Dayanghirang, in whose town the mining site is located, was excluded from Task Force Kalinawan. The politics of gold. I can't help musing if, by a twist of fate, a certain Rody Duterte were mayor of Manay and was excluded by the governor from Task Force Kalinawan...
The mad rush for gold in Kalinawan bears watching. All that glitters...
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (May 13, 2005 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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