We refer to the news article which appeared at the Manila Bulletin on April 27, 2017:
“Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Secretary Gina Lopez ordered last Thursday the banning of prospective open pit mines to ensure the protection of the country’s environment.
The DENR issued last Thursday an administrative order ‘banning the open pit method of mining for copper, gold, silver and complex orders in the country,’ citing records that show ‘most of the mining disasters in the country were due to tailings spills associated with open pit mining.’
‘As a matter of policy, which is my prerogative as DENR Secretary, we’re banning open pit mining prospective, for the following reasons that pit is gonna be there forever and a day, eternally,’ she said during a press conference last Thursday.
‘Who is gonna take care of that? It’s a financial liability to government for life,’ she said. ‘I am doing this because I have no idea what’s going to happen on Tuesday,’ she added.
. . . .
According to DENR Undersecretary for Legal Affairs and Policy Planning Ipat Luna, the DENR Administrative Order will be effective 15 days after its publication in a newspaper.
‘The DENR Secretary has visited a lot of open pit mines and some have been abandoned for 20 years. She realized that we need to do something immediately to stop another damage from happening,’ Luna said, citing the Marcopper disaster, where mine tailings spilled into the Boac River in Marinduque in 1996.
‘The government has to keep taking care of the environment because we have no other choice otherwise it will threaten the communities,’ she said. ‘The government has to do something to stop that damage from happening,’ she added.
When asked whether Lopez has the power to issue such order, Luna said she believes so because ‘under the mining act she (the Secretary) has the authority to define the parameters of the mining activities in order to ensure that the environment is protected for the future generation.’
. . . .”
Please be informed that we have not received any official copy of the said DENR order, thus we have no direct knowledge of its content. At the moment, the Company has no any prospective open pit projects. |