MANILA, Philippines — The National Task Force Mining Challenge formed to run after illegal mining is a threat to small-scale miners and the environment, an indigenous peoples' group said.
The Cordillera People's Alliance, which has been in the forefront opposition to large-scale and commercial mining in the highlands, denounced the creation of the NTFMC and of Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu's move to transform it into a new Department of the Environment and Natural Resources bureau to enforce environmental laws.
The new bureau will be assisted by the military and police, the National Bureau of Investigation and government prosecutors.
The NTFMC, composed of the DENR, Philippine Army and the police Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, started its crackdown on small-scale mining in Baguio City by blasting five small-scale mining operations on February 13.
"The NTFMC is an additional testament of the current regime's earnestness in devising mechanisms to intensify the oppression of indigenous peoples," said Bestang Dekdeken, secretary general of the CPA.
"[I]nstead of teaming up with environmentalists to protect our environment and communities from destruction due to large-scale mining and extractive operations, it is mobilizing state security forces, through the line agency, to wreak havoc in communities of small-scale mining operations," Dekdeken also said.
The campaign poses a risk to the livelihoods of more than 100,000 small-scale miners and their families in the region, Dekdeken also said.
The CPA believes, targeting small-scale mining "increases the opportunities for big mining corporations to encroach on our ancestral domains, expand their destructive operations and monopolize the mining industry."
The IP group said the task force, "is another mechanism to reinforce the US-Duterte regime's tyrannical rule and impunity, a regime that mobilizes a task force to apprehend 'illegal' operations while in itself is a peddler of the same thing on a macro level."
Under the Small-Scale Mining Act, or mining that mostly requires manual labor and "does not use explosives or heavy mining equipment", is allowed in People's Small-Scale Mining Areas or Minahang Bayan. The five operations shut down earlier this month had encroached on military property around the Philippine Military Academy, the DENR said.