Rapu-Rapu villagers criticize groups against mine project

Residents of Rapu-Rapu, Albay asked militant groups if they can help their poor community and create jobs should they succeed in getting Lafayette’s polymetallic project on the island closed down.

“These outsiders are risking our future and our lives in the name of the environment. Their real advocacy is to keep us poor and desperate and we all know why. And they get paid for what they do,” Rapu-Rapu resident Ananias Balato was quoted in a statement.

Balato said these militants and even some Church people have resorted to lying to scare the public on non-existent disasters that they blame on the project.

“It is not true that there was a fishkill in Pagcolbon, where the project is, and in neighboring barangays. I live here and I can tell you we had a perfectly normal life until these outsiders started telling the world we had a fishkill,” he said.

“The world believed these lies because Rapu-Rapu is so remote that there was no immediate way of checking. But if only people can come and see for themselves, including the priests who prefer to just stay in the comfort of Legazpi City, they would realize they are actually putting at risk our present and our future without any basis,” he said.

Militants associated with Sagip Isla, Gabriela, Bayan and other left-leaning groups have camped out in a park in Legazpi City to seek the closure of the polymetallic project because of the supposed fishkill.

Government experts, however, have ruled out the project as the cause of the supposed fishkill in Poblacion, which is more than 10 kilometers away.

The supposed fishkill, based on reports, involved about 10 kilos but no more than two sacks of marine life.

Lafayette has invited the anti-mining groups, including a bishop and his priests, to visit its project site to prove to them that it had nothing to hide and nothing to do with the supposed fishkill. The invitation has yet to be accepted.