Bugkalot tribe asks Nueva Vizcaya board to back mining exploration

BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya – Residents of two mineral-rich villages in mountainous Kasibu town who belong to the Bugkalot ethnic group yesterday asked the provincial board to act favorably on a controversial exploration project in their villages which had been plagued by protests from residents of neighboring areas.

The Bugkalot tribesmen from Kakiduguen and Pao villages in eastern Kasibu bordering Quirino province had pleaded to the provincial board to positively endorse the beleaguered exploration project of Royalco Philippines (formerly Oxiana Philippines) in the two villages despite the opposition of other residents in adjacent villages.

The 200-member Bugkalot Indigenous Cultural Community (BICC), in its two-page letter to Vice Gov. Jose Gambito Jr., belied the claim of one Fidel Opay, president of the Lower Muta Valley Farmers Association, an agricultural organization based in Barangay Pacquet, that most indigenous peoples are against the national government-sanctioned exploration project. The group members are reportedly among those blocking a road in Pacquet on the way to the mining impact zone in the Pao-Kakiduguen area.

According to the BICC, the members of Opay’s group which seeks to prevent the entry of Royalco’s exploration rights do not come from the mining impact area but are from neighboring barangays like Dine, Catarawan and Pacquet with some even coming from this town. Moreover, the Bugkalots said, they “gladly welcome” the exploration project because they believe “it would not be hazardous to the environment and would not destroy our indigenous culture.”

Earlier, in his two-page Iluko letter to Gambito, Opay cited Barangay Pao being a main source of irrigation for plantations and gardens in neighboring villages as the main reason for his group’s opposition to the mining exploration of Royalco (Oxiana), and not that they were “illegal (small-scale) miners” as insinuated.

While admitting that only 60 Bugkalot tribesmen voted in favor of the exploration project as compared to six against the BICC, members said it’s because only heads of the families were allowed to vote during the tribal decision process conducted by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP).

When asked to vouch for the genuineness of the compliance certificate issued by the NCIP to Royalco (Oxiana) Philippines, the agency’s regional director Ruben Bastero confirmed that it was authentic.

“The certificate was issued after a series of consultations and an actual referendum described as tribal decision process was conducted among legitimate Bugkalot land owners within the ancestral domain with the said results,” he said.

The group said that while they are indeed outnumbered now by the migrant indigenous peoples, they want to stress “our rights as Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title holders in the mining impact area in the two barangays be respected like the way we respect their ancestral domains in their respective provinces.”

“We would also like to be given the privilege to decide for ourselves here in our own land. All we want is respect for us Bugkalots who originally inhabited the area,” the group said.