KORONADAL CITY — Ethnic Blaan and T’boli community leaders in South Cotabato came together on Thursday to express support for the start of engineering preparations in 2024 for the extraction of copper and gold in their tribal domains in the hinterland town of Tampakan.
“There has not been any copper and gold mining activity in Tampakan ever since. We are happy it will soon start, most likely between 2024 to 2025,” Blaan leader, Domingo N. Collado, said on Thursday, in reference to Sagittarius Mines Incorporated (SMI) which had been contracted by Malacañang for the project.
Experts in the central office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and visiting mining engineers from Europe and Australia had, in studies done in the past five years, placed at no less than US$200 billion their estimate of the copper and gold deposits in Blaan ancestral lands.
Mr. Collado, who is Indigenous Peoples Mandatory Representative to the Municipal Council of Tampakan, said the Regional Development Council 12, chaired by Cotabato Gov. Emmylou T. Mendoza, had endorsed the project last September via a resolution stating that the venture will generate for the national government and the South Cotabato provincial treasury billions worth of revenues and employment for thousands of residents in the province, the region’s administrative capital.
Officials of the DENR-12 here said on Thursday that the Blaans in Tampakan, about 15 kilometers from this city, the capital of South Cotabato, had been wanting, since 1996, to have the copper and gold deposits in the municipality explored for their benefit, aware of what they can gain from it as provided for by the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act, also known as the Republic Act 8371.
“There has not been any mining operation there in Tampakan since they discovered in the early 1990s that there are enormous deposits of copper and gold there. It is time for the Blaans to benefit from the bounties obtainable in their ancestral lands there,” said Edmund T. Ugal, a T’boli chieftain from another South Cotabato town.
He said the T’boli support the Blaan’s efforts to have the copper and gold deposits in their municipality explored soon.
Dalena M. Samling, a scion of a noble Blaan clan and also a tribal leader in Tampakan, said they are certain of achieving peace and sustainable development in their municipality and in nearby towns once the SMI operations proceed as planned, with permission from the national government.
“There has not been any mining activity in Tampakan yet, but this company has already spent hundreds in millions worth of money for various humanitarian projects in the provinces of South Cotabato, Sarangani and Sultan Kudarat. Surely, our tribe shall get shares from mining operation earnings and benefit from more very costly social responsibility projects of SMI,” Ms. Samling said. — John Felix M. Unson