CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY—The highest official of the Roman Catholic Church here has reiterated his call early Monday night for a moratorium on mining activities even as he hit claims that mining has not contributed to the devastation wrought by Typhoon Sendong last December.
Mayor Vicente Emano said that he had issued “special permits” to mine several hectares in the city’s hinterlands and had not suspended these operations despite snowballing calls for him to halt theses operations. Most members of the City Council here have supported the mayor’s stance.
“I admit I have granted special permits; the law allows me to do that. But [the mining operations] must not destroy the ecology,” Emano said, adding that he will only order the stop of all mining operations in the city if a study conducted immediately “shows that mining operations have destroyed the environment.”
“Only then will we immediately order the cancellation of the permits,” he said.
Archbishop Antonio J. Ledesma, SJ, DD, a long and staunch defender of the environment, has repeatedly called for a stop to all mining operations in the city and in the country and has scored the seeming “business as usual” stance of city government officials following the devastation caused by Sendong.
“It is unconscionable for city officials to adopt a ‘business as usual’ attitude for mining permits to continue,” Ledesma said in his homily during the early Monday night Eucharistic celebration at the St. Augustine Metropolitan Cathedral marking the opening of the “DCM and Bishops’ Forum on Typhoon Sendong and its challenges for Mindanao” as well as a thanksgiving celebration for the 60th anniversary of the archdiocese.
Ledesma urged for a “multi-sectoral monitoring team [to be] allowed to verify the extent of these mining activities whether small scale or large scale.”
During last week’s Joint Municipal and Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council at the Provincial Capitol, Misamis Oriental Environment and Natural Resources officer Conrado “Dodong” Sescon and the Philippine Air Force showed graphic pictures of the damage by mining activities on the city’s and province’s mountains.
Raoul Geollegue, former regional executive director of the Environment department in Northern Mindanao (Region X), lambasted claims that hydraulic mining rampant in the Iponan River cannot be stopped because of socio-economic considerations.
Claims of livelihood and economic windfall to the city from the local mining industry prompted Ledesma to issue a call for the city government to account to the public the true extent of the industry’s contribution to the economy.
“With that point, there is a need for a full disclosure of the identities of these mining firms, their allotted area and contribution to the local economy,” he said.
The Jesuit prelate also scored the fact that the city government under Emano had allowed families for decades “to stay along the river’s own waterways,” referring to Isla de Oro, an island formed in the middle of the Cagayan de Oro River by the accumulation of silt.
Ledesma said this could have been prevented if the city government had foresight and good city planning.
“Disaster preparedness and long-term city planning could have mitigated the dire consequences of allowing households to stay along the river’s own waterways,” he said.
The Emano administration was repeatedly condemned by critics and the opposition for its alleged “leaderless and disarrayed” response to Sendong.
A group, the Save CDO Movement, even initiated a campaign to recall Emano for his mishandling of the city’s affairs, especially following the Sendong tragedy.
