SEVENTY one pocket miners were successfully rescued after being trapped inside a private mine in Itogon town.
Members of the Dalicno Miners Association comprised of 68 males and 3 females were trapped inside private mine for over 8 hours after it collapsed over the weekend.
Residents of barangay Dalicno called on nearby Benguet Corporation (BC) for assistance to rescue the miners, who were trapped near the area of the mine company.
BC resident manager Antonio Buenavista deployed teams with trained rescuers from the safety, security departments and volunteer miners from the company's Acupan contract mining project to the site where the miners were trapped.
The rescue team had to open a plug-up area connecting the underground working area to be able to penetrate the location of the trapped miners.
BC administration department head and lawyer Froilan Roger Lawilao said the rescue team had to conduct over five hours of extensive manual digging from the underground plug-up area before they were able to reach the location of the trapped miners in their private mine tunnel.
"We were elated that the trapped miners were safe when our rescue teams were able to reach the areas where they were said to have been trapped. We express our gratitude to the concerned members of the council of elders and citizens in Dalicno who informed the company of the incident so that we were able to timely deploy our rescue teams in the area to spare the trapped miners from danger," Lawilao added.
Lawilao said the rescued miners were escorted out of the underground working area through the Level 1500 portal and were immediately fetched by BC vehicles from the industrial area to the Balatoc clinic for medical examination.
Itogon is one of the mineral-rich area in Benguet which continues to host the operation of various large- and small- scale mining operations and the municipality is being eyed as one of the potential Minahang Bayan areas that will be declared under existing laws, rules and regulations.