BENGUET Governor Crescencio Pacalso stressed small scale mining (SSM) is a major livelihood in the province making it difficult to stop.
“We should also understand that it is their means of livelihood. There are many families, children that are dependent on small-scale miners, so we cannot totally say put a stop to it as it is major livelihood in our area,” Pacalso said.
The Provincial Environmental and Natural Resources Office (Penro) reports there are 8,000 SSM operations in Benguet although with close to 30,000 miners.
“While they are operating illegally, we cannot really come up with regulations or to control the operations of these small-scale miners,” Pacalso added.
Penro officer Joseph Cervantes said there are legal and unregulated SSM operations, which is a reality in the province.
“As per operations, they will have to go with the policies of small-scale. On actual, there are others that are operating just like in Gumatdang,” said Cervantes.
Toxins have caused the Ambalanga river to turn blue with a total of 146 SSM processing plants comprised of Clean-in-Place (16), Leach Pad (55), Ball Mill (75) were inventoried along the stretch of Gumatdang river and tributaries from Minac of Barangay Tuding down to the Mill Site and a total of 83 SSM processing plant operators were identified.
Pacalso said the SSM advocates would like to be accredited to have an opportunity to be regulated.
“We have requested on the declaration of some areas as small scale mining areas but up to this time they were not given favorable answer from Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB),” Pacalso added.
Last year, the Benguet Federation of Small Scale Miners filed their request to the MGB after the Provincial Mining Regulatory Board declared 12 areas in two towns of the province as potential Minahang Bayan sites last year.
The 10 proposed Minahang Bayan sites are located in Itogon, distributed in the different barangays, except for barangays Tinongdan and Dalupirip, which are classified as agricultural areas.
Applications have been pending since 2004, with no approvals so far with all areas in the province owned by large scale mining companies which leave SSM advocates no area to legally operate.
The Central Bank places at P3 billion annually on the total amount of gold produced by small scale miners in Benguet or an actual average production of three tons of gold.
Since a seven percent tax was imposed by the government over gold sold at the Central Bank, SSM have since sold to the black market.
Under the Minahang Bayan each cooperative would be given an area of 80 hectares, or one block to mine. (With a report from Maria Elena Catajan)