ZAMBOANGA CITY—The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) through the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB), has canceled the application filed by Rigid Aggregates and Mining Corp. (RAMC) for mineral production sharing agreement in this city.
RAMC’s application to extract zinc, lead, copper and other minerals covers an area of 1,336.5 hectares in two adjoining barangays, namely, Baluno and La Paz, west of this city.
MGB regional officer-in-charge Albert Johann Jacildo said the cancellation order dated July 15, 2011 is contained in an official communication he sent to the president of RAMC.
RAMC is a 100-percent Filipino-owned corporation established on April 16, 1999, with office address at U-1909 Antel Global Corporate Center, No. 3 Julia Vargas Ave., Ortigas Center, Pasig City.
In canceling the application, Jacildo stressed that the area being applied for by RAMC in Baluno and La Paz are within the Ayala watershed and “that a co-management agreement involving the same has been entered into between the city of Zamboanga and the DENR-9 giving us the inevitable impression that the latter affords that recognition of being critical watershed to the area subject of the co-management agreement.”
“It is arrogance indeed for this office to say yes after the DENR and the local government unit of Zamboanga City said no, so to speak,” Jacildo said in his order.
“Caught in that predicament, this office is constrained to cause the cancellation of the APSA [application for production sharing agreement]-000127-IX and treat the area as closed to mining applications,” he added.
Per records of MGB-9, Jacildo said RAMC submitted the application on July 20, 2005, and the area applied for will cover some 1,336.5 hectares in barangays Baluno and La Paz.
Initially, he said the application was opposed by a group of industrial establishments in this city’s west coast and had to be evaluated only after the case against it was dismissed on grounds of jurisdiction by the Panel of Arbitrators.
The MGB-9, Jacildo said, at the outset found no legal and technical obstacle that beset the application and thus, forwarded the carpeta to the MGB central office for final evaluation leading to the last and final task of endorsing it to the DENR chief.
Jacildo noted the case of the RAMC mining application is unprecedented as opposition to the application did not stop even at the stage of final evaluation by the central office “so that the carpeta that was already with it had to be returned to this office (MGB-9) for re-evaluation.”
Jacildo said this prompted them to carefully scrutinize everything that surrounds the application of RAMC “in order to decide what to do with it.”
“In the process, we noted that the records contain a resolution of the City Council of Zamboanga, Resolution 137 adopting a policy to recall any resolution of no objection that it may have issued if and when mining applications turn out to be inside the watersheds,” Jacildo said in his order.
The opposition, headed by the Silsilah Dialogue Movement, expressed elation over the decision of the MGB to cancel the application of RAMC for mineral extraction.
“Approval of the application would have been an environmental threat to this city’s supply of clean water, affecting residents of the west coast and the agricultural and manufacturing activities and environs,” the Silsilah Dialogue Movement said in a statement.
The Silsilah Dialogue Movement is a nongovernmental organization composed of Christian and Muslim religious leaders that promotes peace, environmental protection and others through the conduct of a dialog.
