Anti-illegal mining campaign in South Cotabato intensified

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — A multi-sector anti-illegal mining bloc had set-up 18 signages in strategic sites, depicting cross-section efforts of protecting the mineral-rich Tampakan town in South Cotabato, in support of a state-permitted copper and gold extraction in the area soon.

The signages were together erected by barangay officials, among them ethnic Blaan tribal leaders, officials of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau-12, which is based in Koronadal City, and representatives from the Sagittarius Mines Incorporated (SMI), which the national government contracted to operate the Tampakan-Copper Gold Project, possibly starting 2026. 

Experts from the central office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the MGB-12 and mining engineers from Europe had placed at no less than US$ 200 billion their estimate of the value of the copper and gold deposits in Blaan tribal domains in Tampakan, only about 16 kilometers away from Koronadal City, the capital of Administrative Region 12.

Rosalina Lejarso, a barangay councilor in Danlag, and a counterpart in Barangay Tablu, Joseph Escobillo, had separately said the signage project complements their effort to protect Tampakan, where the SMI shall soon, from clandestine illegal mining operations.  

“As barangay leaders, we must help by guarding vigorously against illegal mining in our respective turfs," Lejarso said.

A Blaan chieftain, Datu Domingo Collado, an appointed tribal representative to the Tampakan municipal council, said their tribe is supporting the campaign of the MGB-12, the DENR’s regional office in Koronadal City and the SMI against clandestine small-scale illegal mining in their municipality.

“Our tribe and our local government unit can only benefit from a state-sanctioned legal copper and gold mining in Tampakan, by a private company that we, as the indigenous people here, had provided with a written consent to operate in our ancestral lands around,” Collado said.

He was apparently referring to the SMI, which the Blaan tribe had permitted to mine for copper and gold, possibly starting next year, as contracted by the national government.

Datu Edmund Ugal, an ethnic  T’boli tribal leader in nearby T’boli town in South Cotabato, said they want the setting up of anti-mining signages replicated in their barangays and in the adjacent Lake Sebu, also in the province, that has vast deposits of coal.