THE Mining Industry Coordinating Council will meet for a second time to discuss the details of the review of the 28 mining operations earlier ordered closed or suspended by the Environment department.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, who co-chairs the MICC with Environment Secretary Regina Lopez, said the council will also discuss the organization and funding requirements of the five technical review teams and the technical working group that will oversee their actions.
“We’re going to start the work to make sure that all the issuances regarding mining were done through due process,” Dominguez said in a press briefing in Malacañang this week.
“They [TWG members] will present the plan on what they will do and also the budget because they will have to get professors from state colleges and universities and private universities and experts from different fields.”
As agreed in its organizational meeting on Feb. 20, the technical working group is creating five technical review teams to conduct an “objective, fact-finding, science-based” review of the Environment department’s closure and suspension orders.
When asked during the Palace briefing on the possibility of the MICC and its TWG reversing the DENR closure and suspension orders, Dominguez said: “I’m sure Secretary Lopez welcomes the opportunity for the MICC, which she co-chairs, to review the actions that were recommended by her staff.
“We just want to make sure that they have followed due process. And of course, if there are some lapses in the due process, they can always correct it. They can always correct the lapses in due process and proceed with what they want as long as the due process, as specified by law, has been followed.”
Asked to comment on the position of the mining industry, Dominguez told reporters that “the position I support is the position of President [Rodrigo] Duterte, which is we must follow due process when we are dealing with all kinds of activities.
“We must honor our contracts and we must behave as a government that is responsible. That is the only position I support.”
Dominguez said many of the municipalities hosting the mine sites ordered shut or suspended by the DENR relied heavily on the taxes and other fees paid by mining firms.
The technical working group was created based on MICC Resolution 6 issued on Feb. 9, when the council first met to discuss the closure of 25 mines and the suspension of operations of three others across the country.
The review will be based on “the guidelines and parameters set forth in the specific mining contract and in other pertinent laws, taking into account the valid exercise of the State’s police power to serve the common good of the poor,” the MICC resolution read.
The TWG, in turn, met on Feb. 20 and decided to form the technical review teams consisting of “technical review experts” who, for the sake of objectivity, “shall be independent and [have] no known conflict of interest” with the mining sector or any anti-mining non-government organization.
The review will be conducted over a three-month period because the teams will pore over each of the mining contracts involved in the closure and suspension orders, Dominguez said.