Technology will not stop foreign plunder under the Mining Act of 1995

May 31, 2006

CLOSE LAFAYETTE! MORATORIUM ON MINING IN RAPU-RAPU!
Technology will not stop foreign plunder under the Mining Act of 1995

The activist scientist group AGHAM (or Advocates of Science and Technology for the People) reiterated its call to Malacañang to read and heed the recommendation of the Rapu-Rapu Fact Finding Commission headed by Sorsogon Bishop Arturo Bastes to close Lafayette and have a moratorium on mining in Rapu-Rapu.

"A recidivist like Lafayette Philippines should not be allowed to operate further in the country. *It is clear from the commission's report that Lafayette has caused environmental damage and has broken environmental laws", pointed out AGHAM member Ricarido Saturay Jr., geologist at the National Institute of Geological Sciences at the University of the Philippines Diliman.

"If the governtment allows Lafayette to continue its operations, it is telling the world and the peole that it doesn't care that a mining TNCs may foul up our environment, violate laws, falsify legal documents, understate their revenues and taxes, deceive the people about their mining operations, and yet continue to plunder our mineral wealth without much retribution", lamented Saturay.

"No amount of improvement of technology can erase that record", he added. Standards and safeguards cannot stop foreign plunder while a policy such as the Mining Act of 1995 is in place. The Mining Act allows plunder of raw materials through export and liberalization of the industry*, Saturay clarified.

"Although technology is an indispensable driving force of development, it is only secondary to the government policy or program on the development of the mineral industry. Government policy determines for whom the mining activities serve: the interest of the people or the profit of the large foreign mining firm's", Saturay pointed out.

"What the Filipino people demand is a mining policy that will lead the country into its much needed industrialization, where extracted minerals will be used primarily based on our domestic requirements", said Saturay. The scientist group further noted that large scale transnational mining has not contributed to national development mainly due to its extractive and export oriented nature and has caused environmental damage and economic dislocation of the people in most mining areas in the country.

"Together with the poor people in the rural mining communities of the country, AGHAM condemns . GMA and her policy of allowing wholesale plunder of mineral resources through the Mining Act. Recidivist like Lafayette, GMA's proposed charter change would further worsen the wanton destruction and plunder of our patrimony", Saturay concluded.###