GOLD mining has been with us
in Mambulao since 1571.
Those days, it was the native
Aetas who were doing it and the precious yellow metal they extracted where
bartered with the Chinese merchants, who fashioned it into highly refined
jewelry items, which they brought back to China.
When the Spaniards came to
our community, which, during those days, was still unnamed, they saw the same
group of natives mining along streams, riverbanks and deep in the woodlands.
They saw huge amount of gold
being dug up, exciting them to report to their headquarters in Bicol about
their new find.
This is because Spain needed
more gold from the New World it conquered to
finance its global conquest for new continents.
The powers-that-be in Bicol
called this ancient mining district “Mabulaoan”, to mean lots of gold.
Overtime, the name morphed
into another name which has embedded itself deep in our psyche: Mambulao.
When the Americans came to
take over a colony from Spain
in the 1900s which was no other than the “Las Islas Filipinas”, a group of
explorers found their way to Mambulao.
Seeing gold they had never
seen before, they established in 1933 the San Mauricio Mining Company atop a
mountain that overlooked the poblacion of Mambulao.
However, their operations
were short-lived with the coming of World War II, but good enough to be able to
haul 643,000 metric tons of gold.
Towards the late 1980s,
another mining concern – the JG Realty and Mining Company struck a joint
venture with Benguet Corporation to explore and develop gold resource in
Mambulao.
The joint venture had
estimated about 776,520MT of high grade gold in their exploration areas.
However, due to financial
concerns, Benguet began shedding its operations in 1994 and finally quit mining
in 1997.
Johson Gold Mining
Corporation entered the scene and took over the Benguet mining camp in
Bagong-bayan outside of Mambulao, alongside a 257.3 hectare Bonito Gold Project
formerly owned by Benguet.
Later, JGMC acquired more
mining claim rights, expanding its gold resource to a total of 426.7 hectares
within Mambulao.
Until April last year, Johson
was processing 150 tons of gold ore a day and recovering about 95% of the
precious metal.
But outside this big-scale
gold mining concern are sporadic operations across Mambulao carried out by
small-scale miners commonly known as the “kaboderos”, whose predecessors were
the Aetas of ancient Mambulao.
According to CamNorte
Governor Edgardo Tallado. Chairman of the Provincial and City Mining Regulatory
Board (PCMRG), there are at least 10,000 individuals who are mining gold for
subsistence income.
Tallado being the chairman of
PCMRB which regulates small-scale mining operations in the province knew what
he was talking about.
He’s the one issuing
small-scale gold mining permits to prospective operators until permit issuance
was banned under the Letter of Instruction No. 79 issued on July 6, last year.
Obviously, all gold operators
in Mambulao carry a permit signed by the governor.
There’s no accurate number of
small-time gold operators in Mambulao, but they could run in hundreds, a silent
group that makes any town executive thinks twice before he attempts to
displease them.
They are spread all over our
municipality – in Luklukan Sur, Luklukan Norte; Sta Rosa Sur and Sta Rosa
Norte; San Rafael, Nakalaya, Sta Elena and lately Sta Milagrosa.
These areas are the so-called
“gold districts”, which, in one or the other, are covered by mining claims held
by known gold operators.
The government through the
Mining and GeoSciences Bureau (MGB) and the Department of Environmental and
Natural Resources (DENR) awarded such mining claim rights to their current
holders under the conditions set by law:
That they are going to
develop this gold resource into a productive enterprise without jeopardizing
the environment.
But to operate medium-scale gold mining operations which
these mining rights claimants promised to do under a deal with the government
entail big logistics – money, equipment, technology, personnel, expertise, etc
--- which obviously they don’t have.
So, these gold mining rights
claims have remained idle or undeveloped.
But still, the holders of
such rights make money by farming the areas out to smaller gold financiers
under the royalty basis.
“Dormant or unused mining
claims are made as tools by claimants to collect royalty fees only without them
(claimants) actually undertaking any mining operations,” says Mambulao Mayor
Ricarte “Dong” Padilla in letter to Executive Secretary Paquito N Ochoa
sometime last year.
In this letter sent to the
Palace about three months before President Aquino signed the Letter of
Instruction No. 79 (LOI 79), Padilla had urged Secretary Ochoa to declare the municipality of Mambulao a “mineral reservation”
alongside being declared as “Minahang Bayan”.
Padilla believed that making
a district in Mambulao a “Minahang Bayan” area would provide local small time
gold operators (kaboderos) a place where they could operate legally without
doing much damage to the environment.
Environment and Natural
Resources Secretary Ramon J P Paje said that limiting small-scale mining
operations only in declared Minahang Bayan areas will help contain wastes from
the operations.
LOI 79 has outlawed all
small-scale gold operations conducted outside of the declared Minahang Bayan.
And all dormant mining rights
holders will be removed and would be offered to parties with capabilities to
develop and operate them into a productive enterprise, subject to the
requirements of the law.
Since Mambulao has yet to be
declared as one, gold operations here are all illegal.
Which puts the Mambulao
government between a rock and a hard place: While it sees more and more of its
citizens suffer economically as they survive only with subsistence income from illegal
and reckless gold mining operations, it is also a witness to the gradual demise
of the environment, particularly the Mambulao Bay and its shorelines.
Gold has been in Mambulao
since time immemorial, and it will be with us for another 100 years.
How can we deal with it with
both sides of the coin smiling?
Is the “Minahang Bayan” the
solution we have been waiting for?
Both the environmental
activists and their enemies, the gold miners, got their own agenda to push.
- Alfredo P
Hernandez
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