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| Mine-site Marcopper (Sta. Cruz, Marinduque). Photo: arkimx |
The House Committee on Natural Resources has endorsed for
plenary approval a bill declaring the province of Marinduque a mining-free
zone.
Under Committee Report 1188, the panel, chaired by Cebu Rep.
Rodrigo Abellanosa endorsed the passage of House Bill 9019, a consolidation of
two measures. The bill was principally authored by Marinduque Rep. Lord Allan
Jay Velasco and his sister, MATA partylist Rep. Tricia Velasco-Catera.
“The Marcopper Mining Disaster has caused irreparable damage
to the people and the province. The effects of the incident were so devastating
that a United Nations assessment mission declared it to be a major
environmental disaster,” Velasco, chairman of the House Committee on Energy,
said.
He asked his colleagues to immediately pass the bill “in
order to protect and preserve the natural environment of Marinduque.”
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| Raising anew public concerns over the integrity of the decades-old mining facility. Partylist Representative Tricia Velasco-Catera |
For her part, Velasco-Catera said that justice remained
elusive for the victims of the 1996 Marcopper mining disaster, when 1.6 million
cubic meters of tailings were released along Makulapnit-Boac river system.
“Not a single centavo had been paid as compensation for what
was tagged as the country’s worst mining disaster. Negotiations are still
ongoing at present with Barrick Gold on the compensation of damages to the
province and its people, but an acceptable deal for the victims still does not
appear on the immediate horizon,” she said.
In 2005, the provincial government filed a $100-million
class suit against Marcopper and the parent company Barrick Gold Corp. but the
Nevada State District Court threw out the case a decade later.
Velasco-Catera expressed concern that in early 2017, the
Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) detected leaks in one of the abandoned dams
of Marcopper Mining Corp., raising anew public concerns over the integrity of
the decades-old mining facility.
“The constitutional right of the victims of the Marcopper
mining disaster had been and is continuously being violated. It will be a
rubbing salt in the wound if mining would be allowed to flourish once more in
the province even before proper redress had been provided, ” she said.
House Bill 9019 seeks to prohibit all forms of mining
operations and activity, whether large scale or small scale, in Marinduque. The
proposed law covers all mining operations and activities, including quarrying,
within the territorial jurisdiction of the province of Marinduque.
Violators will be penalized with six to 12 years of
imprisonment and a fine ranging from P1 million to P10 million.
The bill tasks the Secretary of the Department of
Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) , in consultation with the provincial
and municipal governments to promulgate the implementing rules and regulations
of the proposed Act.
Source: Manila Bulletin/Charissa Luci-Atienza
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