DENR seeks security in closure of Mt. Diwalwal

DAVAO CITY — Mines and Geo-sciences Bureau (MGB) Southern Mindanao regional officials are asking that proper security measures be immediately undertaken for the implementation of the total closure order that was supposed to start yesterday at the gold-rush site in Mt. Diwalwal, Monkayo, Compostela Valley.

MGB Region XI director Ma. Luisa Jacinto told The STAR yesterday the security arrangements have to be firmed up first before the closure order can be fully implemented. "There have already been arrangements for security but these were on the higher level. We are still awaiting from the Philippine National Police (PNP) the details of the said security set-up from the local level," Jacinto said.

The Armed Forces, on the other hand, takes charge of the security within the periphery of the 4,999-hectare mining site.

Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Heherson Alvarez met here Saturday with top military and police officials on the government’s takeover of the mining area in a bid to resolve the decades-old conflict among miners at the site. The security details reportedly indicated that the portals of all gold tunnels will be guarded by two police officers each to ensure that no one will attempt to enter the tunnels while miners have to secure their service contracts that would allow them to operate in the area.

Jacinto said the total closure would allow government to make an inventory of the resources in the mining area and at the same time determine who really are the small-scale miners and who are those to be categorized as large players.

The closure order shall be implemented in spite of a pending case in the Supreme Court involving the land claims of the Monkayo Integrated Small Scale Miners Association (MISSMA). The MISSMA miners have been legally fighting for at least 729 hectares of the 4,999 hectares that the multinational giant Southeast Mining Corp. has been claiming.