Mining officials hit for delay

Mining officials hit for delay

THE National Commission on Indigenous People (NCIP) has allegedly designed a new scheme aimed at further delaying the issuance of a document to mining firm MacroAsia Corp. (MAC) which plans to expand its operation in mineral-rich Palawan province.

The NCIP, according to officials of the private firm, will hold a municipality-wide consultation today in Brooke?€™s Point that has a population of about 58,000 instead of bringing the issue to the 3,000 indigenous people in Barangays Maasin, Ipilan and Mambalot who will be affected by the planned expansion.

The 18-barangay consultation, MAC officials claimed, is only an attempt to subvert the result of an earlier free and prior informed consent (FPIC) process which will make the 3,000 population favoring mining operations within their barangays a minority group and the rest of the populace the majority.

The NCIP headed by chairman Zenaida Pawid and two other commissioners?€"Dionesia Banua and Conchita Calzado - have reportedly worked to delay the granting of the Certificate of Pre-Condition (CPC) to MAC for more than a year.

The MAC has a nickel mining claim in Brooke?€™s Point, Palawan where 883 of about 1,000 registered indigenous families have already approved the mining operations through the free and prior informed consent (FPIC) process.

The issuance of the CPC should have been a mere ministerial action since the requirement of the law has already been complied with and the document, equivalent to social acceptability of the mining project, should have been out 15 days after the FPIC report was submitted in March last year.

?€œWhat is ironic here is that Banua and Calzado are voting against it,?€ said MacroAsia legal counsel lawyer Danilo Cortina, who got a letter from NCIP Executive Director Basilio Wandag on October 11, 2011, saying that the commission has denied that a 4-3 decision was reached during the en banc meeting granting CPC to the MacroAsia with Pawid.

The NCIP, in its August 4 en banc meeting, approved the issuance of CPC for MAC. A portion of the minutes of that meeting says former NCIP Chairman Roque Agton and Commissioners Percy Brawner, Cosme Lambayon and Santos Unsad voted in favor of issuing CPC to the mining firm.

Meanwhile, Anti-mining tribal leader Artiso Mandawa of the Ancestral Land Domain Network wrote in his blog that the commission approved the granting of CPC for the MacroAsia with 4-3 votes.

NCIP commissioners Pawid, Banua and Calzado were said to be working with Rep. Teddy Baguilat of the House Committee on Indigenous Communities and ABS-CBN Foundation headed by Gina Lopez to stop MAC?€™s planned expansion.

Meanwhile, lawyer Lorna Kapunan, legal counsel of the West Tower Condominium residents, told a Quezon City forum that the anti-mining campaign initiated by the ABS-CBN Foundation was a clever cover-up for a Lopez-owned company?€™s involvement in an environmental case.

?€œLopez?€™s anti-mining drive in Palawan is a smokescreen aimed at covering-up the environmental destruction wrought by her family-owned First Philippine Industrial Corporation in Brgy. Bangkal, Makati,?€ lawyer Kapunan said.

Authors: mining - Yahoo! News Search Results