A fresh outlook for the mining industry!

For our special presentation on Straight from the Sky tonight, we bring you a discussion on the revival of the Mining Industry. Mining has been one of Cebu's leading exports before Martial Law but somehow it experienced a decline in the 80s and worsened with the closure of the Atlas Mining in Toledo City due to labor and a host of other problems. The closure of Atlas Mining also led to the decline of Toledo City as one of Cebu's industrial cities.

To revive the Mining Industr,y a new law was enacted dubbed RA 7942 or the Mining Act of 1995. But this was blocked by a Non-Government Organization (NGO) called the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center-Kasima sa Kalikasan (LRC-KsK). On January 27, 2004 the Supreme Court declared this law unconstitutional. However on December 1, 2004 the Supreme Court, in one of the most enigmatic reversals in Philippine Law history, reversed its ruling and declared RA 7942 constitutional.

With a new reinvigorated Mining industry, Tony Robbins, Managing Director of Indophil Resources NL wrote a special feature "The Rebirth of the Mining Industry" for the Philippines Business Review. He said, "for the 2004-2010 Medium Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP), the government estimates that the mining industry will generate US$4 to US$6 billion worth of investments, US$5 to US$7 billion in annual foreign exchange and at least 240,000 jobs over the next six years." That means if we pursue a sustainable mining development, this country can become a world leader in the mining industry much like what Australia is today.

To give us a background of the Mining Industry today, we have with us a good friend, Mr. Roy Lotzof, an Australian who calls Cebu his home because he is married to Jacqui Deen. Roy is an Economics graduate of the University of Sydney with honors. He is the President of Tennant Trading, Inc. and acts as a financial adviser to a number of companies, including Lihir Management, TVI Pacific Ltd and Highlands Gold. He is also an active member of the Cebu Rotary Club and is one of the few foreigners I know who wants to uplift Filipinos out of the vicious circle of poverty.

Watch Mr. Lotzof explain the dynamics of our Mining Industry and how mining can improve the economy especially in the poorest areas in the country that has no hope for development. All this you'll see in SkyCable's channel 15 at 8:00PM.

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Last week, we wrote about the discovery of mass graves in Inopacan, Leyte, which contained some 60 skeletal remains, obvious victims of purges by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its blood thirsty ragtag militia the New People's Army (NPA). Apparently another mass grave has been found near the town of Baybay where two skeletons were found not far from a gravesite, which unearthed some nine remains in the year 2000.

Yesterday afternoon, I chanced upon the tail end of an ABS-CBN investigative journalism Probe Team and the topic was the unearthing of two separate gravesites up in the mountain barangays of Cebu City, which Probe Team learned were victims of CPP/NPA purges. Unfortunately, I opened the TV as the show had 10% to go. But from what little I gathered, the skeletal remains were of a husband and wife, who were still tied together hugging each other when they were brutally murdered. Another grave showed a skeleton of a woman whose back was bashed by a huge rock.

As the report goes, the bones of the husband and wife unearthed on Nov.3, 2005 were the parents of Mr. Weng Libre who openly admitted that his parents brought him to the numerous rallies (presumably here in Cebu). When they disappeared, he was told that the military had killed them. It was only later when groups who help the kids who lost parents reported to Probe Team that those victims were "purged" by the NPA in the 80s.

Clearly, when someone disappears and the leftist groups are strangely quiet about his or her disappearance and that disappearance is blamed on the military without presenting any evidences, this is clear-cut proof of the deceit that the CPP/NPA/NDF is promoting in this country. That their armed cadres would brutally murder their own people on a mere suspicion have been proven time and time again and your best evidence is the numerous skeletons found in the mass graves.

Now to the big question. Can we say that the skeletons found in those mass graves died in vain, that because their remains were found years after their gruesome murder, there will be no effort to find out who killed them and why? To my mind, whenever I see Red Flags flying in mass actions denouncing the government for human rights violations, I look at these people with suspicion that they really don't care about human rights!

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For email responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit's columns can also be accessed at www.shootinginsidecebu.blogspot.com