By ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ
IT’S now confirmed: Gold
operations in Mambulao and in two other gold districts in CamNore are illegal.
This was revealed in a
directive issued recently by Theodore Rommel Pestano, officer in charge
regional director of Mines and Geophysics Bureau, to CamNorte Governor Edgardo
A Tallado.
Pestano has ordered Tallado
to stop issuing temporary small-scale mining permits (TSSMP) to gold miners in
the province.
The director said all mining
operations covered by Tallado’s permits are illegal under the Executive Order
No 79 issued in July 2012 as they are done outside a declared Minahang Bayan,
or People’s Small-Scale Mining Area.
Pestano stressed in his
directive to Tallado that the SSMPs he
issued out did not pass an evaluation process supposed to be carried out by the
Provincial Mining Regulatory Board, which the governor himself appointed.
Until now, there has been no
minahang bayan declared in the province, which means all small-scale gold operations
in Mambulao, Paracale and Labo are outlawed, Pestano said.
Said gold operators are
mostly gold-panners who work under a “financier”, the person who finances the extraction
of gold.
In Mambulao, the operators
work in farmlands believed to have gold deposits and in seawaters just a few
meters offshore, at the back of the municipal hall.
The silt at the bottom of
the bay is said to have traces of gold, which the operators are trying to
recover using mercury and other means.
Of late, they have been seen
operating at a former fishpond area in Sta Milagrosa, a village about 5km from
the town proper of Mambulao.
The local government headed
by Mayor Ricarte “Dong” Padilla has been trying to discourage gold operators
from mining the bay for gold because of the pollution it caused to the bay water.
Gold operators have also invaded
many farmlands with gold, destroying the environment by digging up the whole
place as they searched for gold
LGU said it has no power to
stop them since the job of regulating their activities falls under the office
of the provincial governor, in coordination with the mines bureau.
There are about a thousand
gold operators in Mambulao, most of them migrants from Bicol and Quezon.
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