This is a re-posted op-ed piece.
Major mining companies have sent an SOS to the government, seeking protection for an industry that the government likes to tout as one of the most promising growth areas for investment. The SOS was sent by the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines following an attack by New People’s Army extortionists on mining installations in Surigao del Norte.
The attack has put security concerns way ahead of the many other disincentives cited by investors when assessing if they should put their money in the Philippines. That kind of attack will not happen in communist Vietnam in the foreseeable future. And if anyone burned down 90 trucks, heavy equipment and offices in a mining site in communist China, the extortionists would be caught and executed pronto, and their relatives would be made to shoulder the cost of the executioners’ bullets.
Propagandists of the NPA are defending the attack as a defense of the environment rather than retaliation for the refusal of the mining companies to give in to NPA extortion. So what’s the excuse for bombing the telecommunications towers of companies that refuse to pay revolutionary taxes? Cell phone signals cause cancer? And what about the many buses that have been torched because their owners refused to give in to NPA extortion? The buses pollute the air?
The military and police chiefs with jurisdiction over the mining area have been sacked, but there seems to be no spirited effort to pursue at least some of the perpetrators. The government’s wimpish response in the face of terrorism will be remembered by every investor that President Aquino tries to woo.
Maybe the President is no mining fan, and doesn’t see any difference between the major operators who are promoting responsible mining and the small-scale ones, several of them protected by local politicians, who truly don’t care about the environment. If this is how he feels about the industry, he can ban mining and stop factoring mining investments into his GDP figures. Developing ecotourism could be an alternative.
But if he wants mining operations to continue, the state has a responsibility to protect lives and property – including telecommunications towers, public buses and, yes, mining sites.
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Source: The Philippine Star, Editorial, Oct. 12, 2011
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