Police, DENR-12's campaign vs illegal small-scale mining intensified

COTABATO CITY —The police and Department of Environment and Natural Resources-12 have once again launched a crackdown on small-scale illegal gold miners in the hinterlands of two mineral-rich towns in Central Mindanao.

Radio stations in the cities of Koronadal, General Santos, Cotabato and Tacurong on Monday morning stated that the DENR-12, the Police Regional Office-12 and local executives would stop the clandestine small-scale gold mining in mountain ranges in Tampakan in South Cotabato and Columbio in Sultan Kudarat, after waters flowing downstream from two rivers that spring from both areas became murky for several days last week.

Experts in the DENR-12 were quoted in radio reports as saying that they are still investigating assertions by residents that soil dug from small illegal mine pits was swept down by heavy rains early on, causing the discoloration of the waters in both rivers.

Leaders of the Blaan communities in tribal domains in Tampakan, said to have at least US$ 200 billion worth of copper and gold deposits based on studies by geologists in the DENR central office and mining engineers in Europe, said they will support the anti-illegal mining crackdown by their provincial governor, Reynaldo Tamayo Jr., the South Cotabato Provincial Police Office and the Police Regional Office-12.

Tamayo said there are small-scale gold mining operations in Tampakan that his administration and other government agencies would address together.

“There is no legal large-scale copper and gold mining yet in Tampakan. What we have there are illegal, small-scale mining operations,” he told reporters.

An appointed tribal representative to the Tampakan municipal council, the Blaan chieftain Domingo Collado, said they want an absolute ban on what they call “banlas,” or small-scale gold mining operations in their ancestral lands in their municipality.

“We want all of these stopped,” Collado said.

Local officials in Columbio, which has mountain ranges close to Blaan enclaves in Tampakan, have also assured to support the police and DENR-12's revitalized anti-illegal mining operations in both municipalities.

Columbio Vice Mayor Bai Naila Mangelen Mamalinta said they will involve the Blaans in their anti-illegal mining activities.