The Alyansa Tigil Mina Blog

http://news.inq7.net/regions/index.php?index=1&story_id=78879

LUCENA CITY — The Southern Luzon Command (Solcom) has vowed to protect the Agta tribe in Sierra Madre from harassment and death threats by illegal loggers.

“It’s our duty to secure and protect all Sierra Madre stakeholders from the harassment of environmental terrorists,” said Solcom spokesperson Major Jose Broso.

Army troops assigned in Real, Infanta, General Nakar towns in Quezon province and in Tanay, Rizal have been ordered to provide security and protection to Sierra Madre settlers, he said.
Solcom chief Lieutenant General Pedro Cabuay Jr. also urged soldiers on patrol to be vigilant in monitoring illegal logging operations, Broso added. (more…)

Peter Wallace, Manila Standard -
http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?page=peterWallace_june12_2006

12th June 2006
I’VE read the Bastes report and the dissenting opinion of one of its
commissioners, Greg Tabuena. There’s a sense of unreality here.

How on earth can anyone take the Arturo Bastes-led report seriously? Here is a man of the cloth who is supposed to have strong Christian values of ethics and honesty coming out with a supposedly independent, scientific study that is anything but.

And here is a government that is tiptoeing around the report, hesitant to junk it because doing so may upset some people. Let it! These people deserve no cognizance. They are deliberately distorting and exaggerating a minor incident to try and stop mining in the Philippines, not just at Rapu-Rapu, which is the sole mandate of the commission. (more…)

June 10, 2006

By Blanche S. Rivera, Inquirer -
http://news.inq7.net/nation/index.php?index=1&story_id=78686

Editor’s Note: Published on page A1 of the June 10, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

THE Department of Environment and Natural Resources launched yesterday the Kabalikat lounge, where environmentalists, nongovernment organizations and business partners could hold meetings, hang out and or simply “be at peace with the agency.”
However, noted environmentalists walked out in the middle of the
inauguration, expressing dissent over the revitalization of mining
which was included in the DENR’s 12-point agenda, but was not mentioned in the Kabalikat sa Kalikasan covenant. (more…)

Manila Times http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=41447

12th June 2006

As the Philippines mining sector enjoys a long-awaited revival, copper mill manager Libby Ricafort has a problem-rival firms have poached half of the six staff in his metallurgy division.
“Two of them left last year,” the Philex Mining Corp. official told
AFP. “I lost another one this year.”

Mineralogists, geologists, mining engineers and experts in related
fields have become the star targets of headhunting firms as foreign investors pour into the Southeast Asian country’s resources sector.

Philex-which operates the country’s lone surviving copper and gold mine under Santo Tomas mountain, and has been in business there since 1958-has not faced such a hiring crisis for a long while. (more…)

BY NESTOR BURGOS JR., Visayan Daily Star -
http://www.visayandailystar.com/2006/June/10/topstory4.htm

June 10, 2006

ILOILO CITY - The president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines will lead an ecumenical protest rally here against Charter Change Monday during the commemoration of Independence Day.

Jaro Archbishop Angel Lagdameo was earlier announced to be joining the rally in Manila. But the prelate said he preferred to be with his flock when thousands are expected to pour out into the streets in nationally coordinated protest actions. Msgr. Meliton Oso, social action director of the Jaro Archdiocese, said in a press conference that the rally will also be a show of opposition to the Mining Act and the operation of Small Town Lottery.

The 122-member CBCP issued a pastoral statement in April expressing “alarm” over the signature campaign endorsed by the government to change the country’s political system from presidential and bicameral to parliamentary and unicameral. (more…)

Manila Times - http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=41383
11th June 2006

The Senate Committee on Environment and Natural Resources has invited three Cabinet members for the hearing of four proposed measures to review and repeal the Philippine Mining Act of 1995.

The committee, headed by Sen. Pia Cayetano, set the initial hearing on Tuesday in which Environment Secretary Angelo Reyes, Health Secretary Francisco Duque and Trade and Industry Secretary Peter Favila will be the main speakers.

Also invited were Romulo Neri, National Economic and Development
Authority director general; Benjamin Philip Romualdez, Chamber of Mines president; Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines president; the lawyer Marvic Leonen of the Legal Rights and Resource Center; and Dr. Carlos Primo David of the UP National Institute for Geological Sciences. (more…)

BY NANETTE GUADALQUIVER, Visayan Daily Star
http://www.visayandailystar.com/2006/June/09/topstory2.htm

9th June 2006

The Regional Trial Court Branch 61 in Kabankalan City yesterday issued a writ of injunction preventing two groups of former employees of Philex Gold Philippines Inc. and National Labor Relations Commission sheriff Enrico Paredes from selling the levied properties of the Sipalay-based mining firm, which supposedly belong to its sister company, Philex Mining Corporation.

Judge Henry Arles, in his 15-page order, said the auction sale is
suspended until further order from the Court, provided that petitioner PMC puts up a bond of P2 million.

Arles issued the order after both PMC and PGPI, through their vice
president for legal and human resources management, Deogracias Contreras Jr., filed a civil case against the former employees and Paredes, claimed that the levied properties are owned by PMC, not PGPI as a third party claimant, citing a collateral trust indenture entered into by the two sister companies. (more…)

Manila Times http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=41206

9th June 2006

Residents of Rapu-rapu Island in Albay stand to earn only P2 a day for the entire seven-year mining operation of Lafayette Philippines Inc. This was bared in a risk analysis conducted recently by the consultancy firm RiskAsia Consulting Inc. commissioned by the environmental group Greenpeace Southeast Asia to determine the economic viability of Lafayette’s mining operation.

At a press conference, Beau Baconguis, toxic campaigner of Greenpeace, said 30,000 residents of Rapu-rapu Island are at a losing end with only P176.6 million coming to them in direct benefit for the duration of the mining operation.

“The mine will only exacerbate poverty on the island and its outlying areas, depleting their resources and leaving them with little hope for economic recovery after the island and its surrounding seas have been substantially damaged,” she said. (more…)