South Cotabato tribal folk hit Environment Code

MANILA, Philippines - Thousands of ethnic Blaan and Tboli folk picketed the residence of South Cotabato Gov. Daisy Avance Fuentes yesterday and demanded that she overturns the Environment Code that the provincial legislative body passed last week.

The indigenous folk said the code, which impacts on their lives and basic rights as dwellers of the province’s hinterlands, was passed without necessary consultations with them.

The protesters, numbering about 3,000 men, women, children and elderly, arrived in trucks and other vehicles from the provinces of Davao del Sur and Sultan Kudarat and the towns of Tampakan, Surallah and Tboli in South Cotabato.

Fuentes was earlier quoted in reports that she would approve the code, which specifically prohibits open pit mining in South Cotabato, a provision that raised an uproar from business and government leaders.

South Cotabato hosts the $5-billion Tampakan gold-copper project which is currently being explored and studied by Sagittarius Mines Inc. (SMI), which put in the largest single investment in the history of the Philippines.

Facing the protesters, Fuentes invited into his house the seven tribal leaders of the group with whom she promised to hold in abeyance for a week her decision on the Environment Code even as she sought a meeting with the SMI management yesterday.

One tribal leader said Fuentes told them that she would meet with the SMI management yesterday and would take a look at the company’s water resource management and rehabilitation plan.

She also reportedly committed to the tribal leaders that she would not sign the code this week to give time for more dialogue with the stakeholders. 

There have been speculations that the code was aimed at driving away SMI, which provincial legislators readily denied. SMI has been conducting drilling explorations and feasibility studies on the Tampakan gold-copper project since 1999.

Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Horacio Ramos declared that the South Cotabato Environment Code undermines Republic Act 7942 or the Philippine Mining Act of 1995 and runs counter to the national policy of revitalizing the Philippine mining industry.

Mindanao Development Authority chairman Jesus Dureza warned that the South Cotabato Environment Code puts the government entities that have been working hard to attract investments in the country, especially in Mindanao, in a disconcerted position.

The Tampakan copper-gold project, which is also jointly hosted by Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani and Davao del Sur, has been declared by the Regional Mineral Development Councils of Regions 11 and 12 as their flagship development project.

 Dalina Samling, a female Blaan chieftain from Danlag in Tampakan town, said most tribal folk along the Tampakan gold-copper project have pinned their hopes on SMI in tapping the mineral deposits in their homeland.

SMI expects to generate up to 8,000 to 9,000 jobs during the construction phase of the project and more than 2,000 others during full-swing mining operations, said SMI communications manager John Arnaldo.

The $5-billion Tampakan gold-copper project contains an estimated 2.4 billion tons at 0.6 percent copper and 0.2 grams per ton gold, having the potential to become the largest mine in the country and place the Philippines among the top copper producers in the world. The deposit has a mine life of more than 20 years.