Ethnic tribes elated with Cimatu’s visit to copper-rich town

KORONADAL CITY, Philippines — The Blaans saw as “good sign” the visit of Natural Resources Secretary Roy Cimatu to Tampakan town where there are copper deposits they want mined to bail them out from grinding poverty.

Dalena Samling, a Blaan tribal leader, told reporters Saturday they were elated with Monday’s dialogue between Cimatu and community representatives wishing to have the copper fields in the municipality explored for socio-economic gains.

Cimatu was accompanied on Monday to Tampakan, a centuries-old domain of ethnic Blaans, by mining engineers and geologists from the central office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and senior Region 12 DENR officials.

“That visit of a DENR secretary to Tampakan was a strong proof that the national government supports our struggle to be permitted to extract the copper deposits in Tampakan. A good sign indeed,” Samling said.

Domingo Collado, Tampakan’s municipal indigenous people’s mandatory representative, said Saturday the visit of Cimatu to their hometown should encourage members of the South Cotabato Sangguniang Panlalawigan to immediately lift the controversial provincial ordinance that bans copper mining activities in the province.

“It’s obvious that the national government wants responsible mining activities done in the country to generate revenues to cope up with deficits due to huge expenditures for anti-COVID-19 measures,” Collado said.

Cimatu, while in Tampakan, told community leaders and their mayor, Leonard Escobillo, that the DENR’s only wish is for all to cooperate in ensuring responsible mining in the municipality once permitted to explore the copper fields around.

The South Cotabato SP has been reviewing since November 2021 the provincial anti-mining ban based on clamors of the Blaan and T’boli communities and the business groups here and in other parts of the province to have it rescinded.

Filipino mining experts and geologists from Europe and Australia have placed at no less than 5.8 billion in Euro currency the value of the copper deposits in Tampakan, about 14 kilometers from this city, the capital of South Cotabato.

Edmund Ugal, a T’boli datu in nearby T’boli town in South Cotabato, said Saturday they are grateful to Cimatu and his entourage for their visit to Tampakan last Monday.

“Surely, they must have felt our immense bid for the extraction of copper in Tampakan, the only way the Blaans there can rise from poverty and underdevelopment. Their visit was a good sign. We are thankful to them,” Ugal said.

Cimatu was reported by local media outfits this week to have expressed fascination over how the firm contracted by the government to extract copper in Tampakan, the Sagittarius Mines Incorporated, had facilitated the schooling of now more than 700 professionals via its college scholarship program despite not having even operated yet since 1995.

SMI officials reported to Cimatu on Monday that the company had already spent hundreds in millions worth of money for reforestation, infrastructure, health and education projects and livelihood support programs for local beneficiaries.

The firm presently has 31,000 elementary, high school and college scholars, Blaan leaders told the visiting DENR officials.

“We just need to make sure there shall be responsible mining here,” Cimatu told them during their meeting.