Pampanga expects record income from quarrying

SAN FERNANDO, Pam­panga – The office of Gov. Ed Panlilio announced yesterday that his seven-month-old administration is about to overtake the all-time-high record of P150.5 million income from lahar sand quarrying raised in this province by the government-owned Natural Resources Development Corp. (NRDC) for one entire year in 1999.

At the same time, Panlilio has introduced a new measure to safeguard against anomalies in the collection of fees from lahar sand haulers.

Panlilio’s spokesman, Rom­mel de Jesus, said the provincial government introduced last Friday “the use of monitoring tickets as an additional safeguard in the proper payment of tax and fee on sand that are hauled out of the province.”

There have been some allegations that there are again anomalies in the local quarry industry amid reports that haulers of sand repeatedly present to monitoring groups the same receipt issued by the provincial government to avoid payment.

“The trial run for the new system started last Friday,” said Allan Cunanan, head of the operations unit of the Biyaya a Luluguran at Sisi­kapan or Balas, a special committee formed by the governor last year which put in place a new collection and regulatory system in the local quarry industry.

This, even as De Jesus noted that quarry income of the provincial government has reached 145.143 million as of Feb. 8.

“The Panlilio administration is P5 million away from the P150.488 million – the highest revenue collected by the NRDC in 1999, the first year of its take­over of local sand quarrying upon orders of then president Joseph Estrada,” he said.

Cunanan said that under the stricter new scheme for monitoring quarrying operations, “tickets are issued to valid quarry operators after they pay the P300 fee to the provincial treasurer’s office – the capitol’s first line of monitoring.”

“Haulers are still required to present the receipts to Balas checkpoints.  However, the receipts will no longer be torn,” he said.