Gold rush in QC

Hundreds of people have flocked to a creek in an overcrowded squatters’ area in Barangay Del Monte in Quezon City after some residents found gold nuggets, witnesses said yesterday.

A barangay captain said it was a puzzle as to how the nuggets got into the trash-strewn and heavily silted channel.

"It is a puzzle. All we got from this before was trash," he said.

Alfredo Gallo, 15, found a "nugget" of gold after scouring the waterway under the bridge near Feliz street in West Riverside on Friday. His father sold the gold to a pawnshop for P30,000 and bought a television set and a bicycle.

"I scratched the riverbed with a stick and saw a yellow thing glittering. I immediately took it and ran home," Gallo said.

The channel frequently overflows during the rainy season, flooding low-lying slums and causing intestinal diseases.

Witnesses claimed a mining truck was dumping sand in the area last Monday.

Construction worker Danilo Sabas, meanwhile, drove from the other side of Manila and took off from work to pan for gold in the stream as children played and swam nearby.

He used fish nets and steel pans and ploughed the waterbed before finding a small piece of metal which he believed was gold. He showed it to photographers and said he would take it to a pawnbroker later in the day.

"I will sell this immediately," he said.

As of yesterday, no other prospector have been as lucky. — AFP