Benguet Corporation
Milks Local Miners
Benguet Corporation (BC)
earns P15,000 ($267.86 based on a $1:P56 exchange rate) each day or
P450,000 a month from “entrance fees” it collects from 1,000 small-scale
miners who work its L-070 open pit mine site in Sitio Antamok, Brgy.
Loacan in Itogon, Benguet.
BY LYN V. RAMO
Northern Dispatch
Posted by Bulatlat
BAGUIO CITY —
Benguet Corporation (BC) earns P15,000 ($267.86 based on a $1:P56 exchange
rate) each day or P450,000 a month from “entrance fees” it collects from
1,000 small-scale miners who work its L-070 open pit mine site in Sitio
Antamok, Barangay Loacan in Itogon, Benguet.
Despite this, a
48-year-old miner who has been working for BC since 2002 reveals that the
company does not even spend a centavo on the maintenance of the mine site.
The man ways are left unlit, ventilation facilities are damaged and the
rotting timber and iron railings emit fatal gas inside tunnels, he says.
“Dakami a ti
mangitrabtrabaho kadagiti pagnaan tapno nasaysayaat a maka-abante kami”
(It is us who work the man ways to be able to work further ahead), the
respondent, who requested anonymity, told Nordis.
“Nadagsen ti P15
nga inaldaw ngem an-anusan mi ta awan met ti sabali a panggedan” (P15
a day as entrance fee is too much but we have to make do because we do not
have any other work), he also said.
He confides that in
2003, a miner fainted inside a tunnel and died from gas poisoning. The
company did not even give financial help to the grieving family, he says.
Sharing
arrangements
The miner said the
company collects the daily fees through a pocket miners’ association which
entered into a contract mining venture with BC.
Unlike in the Acupan
and Balatoc mines where the company gets 50 percent of the total mine ore
production and takes care of milling all the ore, BC leaves the milling to
the Antamok miners.
Miners in all of BC’s
partnership mines have to rent the ball mill at P100 per load to process
the gold ore.
In Acupan and Balatoc,
however, the company processes all the ore and keeps the tailings for
further processing. Private ball mill owners get the tailings. Seventy
per cent of the gold are recovered in the tailings when further subjected
to the carbon-in-pulp (CIP) mill.
In Acupan, each
25-kilo sack of the tailings commands P75-P100. Ball mill operators near
the Antamok mines either sell the tailings or process it in
privately-owned CIP mills.
Not yet earning
The workers are
grouped into smaller kumpanya (literally, companies) who work
certain destinos (destinations) underground. Our respondent’s
company has been working its destino for three years now and has
not hit any ore body.
“Awan ti
produksyon isunga makisagsagaok kami kadagiti kumpanya a nakatsamba”
(We have not produced so we ask other companies who have found the ore),
the Nordis source said. Sagaok is an indigenous equity-sharing
scheme among Cordillera’s small-scale miners.
The company, he says,
has a sure earning while the miners sweat it out with no assurance of
compensation for a day’s toil.
He also wants the
company to rehabilitate the mines or at least provide materials for its
maintenance.
Late last year, the
price of gold peaked at $450 per ounce and is expected to rise.
BC’s partnership
mining scheme is among those listed as “best practice” in wealth-sharing
by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources two years ago.
But its L-1500 in
Acupan mine site, also in Itogon, was barricaded by surrounding
communities for its possible adverse effects on the communities and the
environment. Local small-scale miners also rejected the terms and
conditions the company offered in the contract to miners from other
provinces in the Cordillera region. Northern Dispatch / Bulatlat
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