Mindanao leaders have called on government to immediately pave the way for the start of the Tampakan mining project in South Cotabato by approving the environmental compliance certificate of Sagittarius Mines Inc. which it denied last month.

Lawyer Jesus G. Dureza, formerly the presidential adviser on Mindanao affairs, and Vicente T. Lao, chair of the Mindanao Business Council, both believed Mindanao and the entire country needs the $5.9 billion project in the fight against poverty.

“This project needs the support of government,” said Dureza, who resigned as chair of the Mindanao Development Authority after the election of President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III. He now sits as publisher of the TIMES.

Lao, on the other hand, said there is “no way for the project to be stopped” saying this will determine the seriousness of the Aquino administration in luring investors to invest in the country.

“They (mining company) are responsible company, the government must protect them,” he told the TIMES, emphasizing that the South Cotabato provincial government seems playing with investors as there were some provincial government officials who claimed small scale miners want to mine Tampakan if the mining company, backed by multinationals Xtrata and Indophil.

“Are they (provincial government) saying the small scale miners are better at protecting the environment?” Mr. Lao said in reference to news article that came out about the interest of some groups that wanted to replace Sagittarius in mining the area.

Last month, the Environment department denied the company’s application for environmental compliance certificate on the ground that the open-pit mining ban of the provincial government is still in existence.

The position of the department contradicted the position of other top officials, among them Interior and Local Government Secretary Jesse M. Robredo, that the ban cannot supersede the national law, the Mining Act of 1995, which only spells out responsible mining and does not ban any other mining process.

Because of this, three of the four mayors whose towns will get affected with the implementation of the mining project have appealed before Aquino to immediately allow the project to start.

In a forum on the economic impact of the project sponsored by the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines, Mayors Leonardo V. Escobillo Sr. of Tampakan, South Cotabato; Datu Amir M. Musali of Columbio, Sultan Kudarat; and Marivic C. Diamante of Kiblawan, Davao del Sur were in unison in asking the President that their respective communities need the project badly for them to eventually realize better economy.

The other town where part of the project will be located is Malalag, Davao del Sur where the company was planning to build its port and power plant.

Escobillo, whose municipality is where the main part of the project is located, assured the President that his constituents support the project based on the survey that he commissioned.

He pointed out that even when the company has yet to start the project it already has provided free education to the people of the municipality.

Like Escobillo, the two other mayors also said that their municipalities have started benefiting from the project as the company has been doing corporate social responsibility activities to ensure that their lives of the people in these areas will be uplifted.

In allaying fears of those who believed that the project will cause environmental destruction, the mayors said they will do their roles as chief executive officers of their towns to ensure that the company will protect the environment by sticking to the programs that it has submitted to the government.

“We will make sure that SMI will do its best to come up with mechanisms need to preserve the environment,” Escobillo said as he appealed to those blocking the project to be open-minded to the benefits that it will bring not only to his town but to the entire country if the project pushes through.

In the same forum, Artemio F. Disini, chair of the Chamber of Mines of the Philipines, said the government must ensure the project will proceed to assure the business community of the country that it is serious in protecting the investors.

Disini said the government must ensure all its instrumentalities to “follow the law” considering that the mining company has been doing its best to comply with the requirements that the government is
imposing so that the project will proceed.

He added this is the main point that his group has raised before the government on its plan to revise the mining policy of the country. The President is reported to have been reviewing the draft of the mining policy that the study group he created has submitted to him.