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ENVIRONMENTAL activists on Thursday picketed the South
Korean Embassy in Makati City and demanded the pullout
of Korean investments in the administration’s flagship
mining project in Rapu Rapu Island, Albay.
The
protest action, according to Kalikasan-People’s Network
for the Environment (Kalikasan-PNE) should send a strong
signal to the Korean government of how their business
will be in the Philippines as far as mining is
concerned.
Last
April 2008, Philco Resources Ltd.—which is jointly owned
by LG Metals and Kores Inc.—gained majority control of
Lafayette Philippines Inc. (LPI). Lafayette is
previously an Australian-owned company, which operates
the Rapu Rapu Polymetallic Mining Project.
Bayani
Agabin, former spokesperson of LPI, confirmed that the
Korean government through Kores, its investment arm, is
taking over the operation and is optimistic of
generating income in its first year of operation.
Agabin
said the company is, in fact, infusing $30 million to
boost Lafayette’s operation in Rapu Rapu Island,
confident that with the new systems in place, it is
ready to resume commercial operation.
He said
the additional investment will ensure the safety of
operations to prevent a repeat of the accidental
chemical spill in 2005, which prompted the Department of
Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to investigate
and suspend its operation.
The
Filipino management team, which used to run the
Australian interest resigned from the company last week
after negotiations with the new owners fell through.
“There
is no reason to continue the
Lafayette
mining project. Its three-year operation in
Rapu Rapu Island
has brought so much environmental destruction, community
displacements, human-rights violations and livelihood
loss to the local people,” Clemente Bautista, national
coordinator of Kalikasan-PNE said.
Lafayette was found liable by the Philippine government
in November 2005 of contaminating the waters in Rapu
Rapu with cyanide and was fined P10 million for damages,
as a result of two accidental mine spills, a landslide
and a reported fishkill, which happened during the
operation of Lafayette from June 2005 to October 2007.
This
resulted in Lafayette Mining Ltd., the Australian
listed-parent company, being placed under voluntary
administration. The local companies filed a petition for
rehabilitation with the
Pasig
courts in February.
Bautista
reiterated that the Rapu Rapu mine should be closed for
good instead of being sold to another mining investor.
“We have
reiterated before that large-scale mining is not
technically, economically and socially feasible in the
small-island ecosystem of Rapu Rapu. The Korean
companies are not welcome in the island and they will
suffer the same fate of Lafayette,” Arieto Radores,
spokesman of Umalpaska-Bikol, an antimining-plunder
alliance in the region stressed.
Mines
and Geosciences Bureau previously ordered Lafayette to
pay P134 million to ensure that the environment around
the mine site is restored and rehabilitated in the event
that the project is abandoned. “The Arroyo government
has not learned its lesson from its bankrupt flagship-
mining project. As the mining project in Rapu Rapu
continues to be antipeople, antienvironment and serves
only the interest of foreigners and corrupt government
officials, it will fail and be kicked out of the
island,” Bautista said.
LPI was
the first foreign firm to operate a mine in the
Philippines after a law granting full foreign ownership
of local-mining projects was upheld by the courts in
late 2004.
Its Rapu
Rapu mine was forecast to generate revenues of $350
million a year from annual production of 10,000 tons of
copper in concentrate, 14,000 tons of zinc in
concentrate, 50,000 ounces of gold and 600,000 ounces of
silver.
The mine
facility, which resumed operations in February last year
after its suspension, is operating at just over half of
its daily processing capacity of 3,000 tons of ore.
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