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Sunday, January 15, 2006
Gulle: Lost opportunity
By Inocentes A. Gulle
Your Business is Our Business
"MAKE hay while the sun shines," that means taking advantage of the situation. Taking advantage of what the opportunity offers could either mean good or bad in the end. So it's a matter of looking a little farther ahead to see the effects beforehand.
I felt some kind of feeling of loss when I read the report on the provincial government of Palawan winning its suit against the national government over the sharing of profits from the Camago-Malampaya natural gas mining operations. The report said the project is expected to generate some $8.1-billion for the government and $2.1-billion for the province. Now that's a lot of money in any language, for the development of Palawan, even if some of it would be stolen by some crooks in the government. I cannot help but wonder what could it have meant for South Cotabato, Columbio and General Santos City for that matter, had the Western Mining Company been allowed to develop its copper project in Tampakan, starting some nine years ago or so.
Experts say the mineral (gold and copper) deposit contained in the Tampakan-Columbio area is one of the biggest in the world. How big is big we do not know until the last ore will have been extracted. But they say it could mean several billion dollars in revenues. That's not counting the several millions of dollars that would flow into the local economy in terms of development investments.
Now we have lost a great opportunity, thanks to the likes of Bishop Gutierrez and the hundreds of his over-eager acolytes and that misguided Protestant UCCP pastor who chose to advocate anti-government militancy instead of ministering to the souls of his flock.
But not everything is lost, though. We can still pick up from the bog. I understand the mining operations would be resumed (by another firm) or so I heard. Perhaps we can still take advantage of the blessings from the bowels of the earth, although so much water had already passed under the bridge, so to speak. Better late than never as they say.
Well it's not bad to be militant over the assets of the state of protect the environment as they would like to put it. In fact that would be a commendable gesture. However, they should first consider the good against the bad that could result. Considering that the bad could have been prevented by using the good that could be reaped they should not have fought against the project.
They could instead be profitably vigilant by keeping a tight watch over the operations, whether they strictly institute and/or observe community health and environmental protection measures. That would be more advantageous all around instead of killing altogether the goose that could lay the golden egg.
Problem with our militants is that their main preoccupation is to destroy the existing system and supplant their own ideology that even the original proponents had already discarded.
(January 2, 2006 issue)
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