The mining community of Itogon in Benguet is planning to switch to other livelihood activities aside from small-scale mining as it destroys the community’s environment and results in deaths of many locals, as evidenced by the aftermath of Typhoon Ompong, according to Itogon Mayor Victorio Palangdan.
“In Itogon, as much as possible we don’t like mining, it destroys our environment. You can see there are many people who died from the experience of Ompong up to the present. We can now see the picture of what will happen to the municipality if mining will still continue so we would like to transform our municipality to agro forest tourism,” Palangdan was quoted in a Sunstar report.
“Our municipality has been mined for more than 100 years. Can you imagine the extent of tunnels that were not backfilled? Can you imagine how many rivers were diverted just for the sake of mining Antamok where they apply open pit mining what is happening now? Mountains, rivers are destroyed. We are now teaching our people not to believe that small scale mining is still their livelihood. We can transform it slowly,” he added.
Palangdan added that on the application of Minahang Bayan, they are recommending safe and responsible small scale mining and they do not tolerate that miners will continue to operate tunnels that were left by big mining firms.
Palangdan expressed fears that Barangay ucab will be erased from the mop if small-scale mining is not put out of operations.
“So kahit maging unpopular mayor ako against this small scale mining I will do it. To stop this operation,” Palangdan stressed.
The local mayor said they are still monitoring gold processors and will arrest those who will continue the practice.
“The municipality is distributing livelihood project to the people, not small scale mining, we continue our project to finance trainings of our people for employment,” he added.
