After the cleanup of Aklan’s world-famous Boracay Island and Manila Bay, the Environment department wants mining companies and even small-scale miners to strictly comply with the laws, rules and regulations, and guidelines of responsible mining.
At a news conference in Quezon City on Tuesday, Wilfredo Moncano, the department’s Mines and Geosciences Bureau director, vowed to ensure full compliance with environmental laws and policies.
“We want to show that DENR and MGB have done something to correct the mistakes in the past,” he said.
The Mines and Geosciences Bureau also said Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu had “favorably” endorsed the renewal of OceanaGold Corp.’s Financial or Technical Assistance Agreement to the Office of the President.
Moncano said “the President [Rodrigo Duterte] was the signatory to the renewal.
But he said should any deficiency be found because of the Indigenous People’s Rights Act, the President may not grant the approval.
After an audit of mine firms by the inter-agency Mining Industry Coordinating Council, Moncano said, the DENR had begun to conduct a crackdown on illegal mine operations and violations in the provision of the Mining Act.
“We found many issues in the audit,” he said in a statement.
“And we addressed them. We have made sure that our policies to enforce responsible mining now have more teeth.”
In 2018, Moncano said the DENR even issued Administrative Order 2018-19 to heighten the level of compliance with the mining law and rules and regulations, and to intensify the rules on rehabilitation, environmental protection, social development and even employment of indigenous workers in mining communities.
“One of the things we learned in the MICC audit was the lax compliance with the maximum disturbed area policy,” he said, adding “so we addressed this by limiting the maximum disturbed areas. This means rehabilitation and re-vegetation starts sooner in mining operations.”
According to Moncano, the MGB had already compelled miners to collect the topsoil and subsoil of a disturbed area to prevent the soil form eroding end and polluting rivers and other areas once it rained.
“Before, the top soil was just being bulldozed to the side of the mining site,” he said.
To further intensify the promotion of responsible mining, he said, there was a need to create an environmental enforcement task force into its bureau pending congressional approval.
“The advantage of the task force is that it operates using the provincial environmental and natural resources offices as well as the community environment and natural resources offices,” he said.