“With the celebration of Mine Safety Week, the mining industry is
portraying itself as a socially responsible industry, but in truth it is
nothing but a self-serving, destructive and exploitative industry.” –
Kakay Tolentino, a Dumagat spokeswoman of Katribu Partylist
By MARYA SALAMAT
Bulatlat.com
MANILA – “There is life in mining,” said the oft-repeated ad of a mining company. But life for whom?
On the first day of the “celebration” of Mine Safety Week,
representatives of Filipino farmers and indigenous peoples, scientists
and environmentalists, expressly distanced themselves from the
government celebrations and instead held protest rallies across the
Philippines against what they described as liberalized, plunderous
mining, which also often comes with brutal militarization.
In Manila, the protesters marched to the Mendiola Bridge (now Chino
Roces) and held a brief program there. They condemned “the continuing
environmentally destructive impact to communities and key ecosystems
attributed to foreign mining companies.” They unfurled an image of what
they said as real “righteous path,” a paved road to national
industrialization and an end to destructive, extractive and largely
foreign-controlled mining.
The activists reminded Aquino that the 29th anniversary of the first
recorded mining disaster in the Philippines coincided with the opening
of Mine Safety Week.
Intensifying people’s resistance to mining
Long before the much-criticized Mining Act of 1995, on November 8, 1982,
the walls of the tailings pond of the Maricalum Mining in Negros
crumbled and collapsed, unleashing a torrent of million tons of mine
wastes on the river system and agricultural fields of Negros, recalled
Clemente Bautista, national coordinator of Kalikasan, an
environmentalist group.
Critics of ‘plunderous large-scale mining” arrive at Mendiola Bridge. (Photo by Marya Salamat / bulatlat.com)
The incident, said Bautista, “poisoned the rivers, submerged the
farmers’ crops and inundated with toxic wastes thousands of hectares of
farmlands in Negros. It drove away thousands of hungry families from the
towns of Sipalay and Cauyan in Negros.”
“With the celebration of the Mine Safety Week, the mining industry is
portraying itself as a socially responsible industry, but the truth is,
it is nothing but a self-serving, destructive and exploitative
industry,” said Kakay Tolentino, a Dumagat and spokeswoman of the
Katribu Partylist.
“President Benigno Aquino III, the Department of Environment and
Natural Resources (DENR) and the Chamber of Mines wish to portray the
current state of mining in the Philippines as responsible and nurturing
both for the environment and the citizens, but it is just a cover-up,”
said Natalie Pulvinar of Advocates for Science and Technology for the
People (AGHAM).
In celebrating Mine Safety Week, “Aquino just wants to make a show as
if the Mining Act of 1995 is still good and functioning despite
protests and the very ugly effects of large-scale mining,” Pulvinar
added.....
MORE
Source: Bulatlat.com
URL:
http://bulatlat.com/main/2011/11/09/mining-related-deaths-destruction-haunt-celebration-of-mine-safety-week/