Much-awaited ‘fair’ mining EO arouses fear

The Inquirer issue of March 4 reported,  “Fair” mining EO (executive order) assured. I say, “fear the mining EO because ultimately it wouldn’t be fair.” The mining industry does not really care about poverty, otherwise we would have been better off in terms of employment and food security.  The mining corporations brag about contributing hugely to government coffers—about P2 billion. But compared to the damage caused by mining operations, P2 billion is a very small fraction of the industry’s total earning of P1.2 trillion. And can there ever be full compensation for irreplaceable resources, not to mention the thousands of families displaced and crop production losses? Lands devoted to agricultural production are getting fewer and smaller due to land conversion for non-food uses—e.g., residential, industrial, biofuels. At the rate it’s going, the Philippines will soon become the world’s biggest rice importer.

Fear the mining EO, for it will only cater to big foreign corporations and their local partners. For more than a century, foreign mining corporations have been looting our natural resources. Let us not be deceived further. Were mining corporations fair in their dealings? Remember Marcopper in Marinduque; Lafayette in Rapu-rapu; Taganito Mining Corp. in Claver, Surigao del Norte; the open pit mining operations in Benguet by Lepanto, Philex and Benguet Corp., the list goes on.  We call for a stop to deliberate, massive and unscrupulous extraction of our mineral reserves! Defend and preserve our national patrimony against foreign big business plunder!

—JHANA JUNE D. TEJOME,

executive director, Philippine Network of Food Security Programmes Inc., [email protected]