Govt imposes logging, mining ban

THE government has canceled up to 500 inactive mining permits and suspended all large-scale mining applications until the end of the year while it reviews all pending and inactive claims, Environment Secretary Ramon Paje said Friday.

The announcement came on the heels of President Benigno Aquino III’s declaration of an indefinite logging ban nationwide earlier this week and the creation of an anti-illegal-logging task force led by Paje.

Paje said Friday he had already ordered all the regional offices of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau to stop accepting and processing new mining applications.

“We have more than 500 permits that were canceled irrespective of who signed them,” he said.

We review[ed] [the] permits issued, and those which we have found to be infirm or incomplete in terms of requirements or non-compliance we have canceled.”

Paje said the permit revocation applied to all mining permits covering exploration, production- sharing agreements and financial and technical assistance agreements.

He said he had given the regional offices until Feb. 20 to clean up 50 percent of their pending and inactive mining applications, and until the end of the year to finish the rest.

Records at the Mines and Geosciences Bureau show that there are now 2,180 mining tenement applications pending in the regional offices for an average of 10 years or more.

Paje cited a financial and technical assistance agreement in northeast Mindanao that hac been idle for 16 years, and a mineral production agreement in southern Tagalog that hac been inactive for at least 15 years.

The exploration contracts that have expired for five years or more and the mining contracts that have not implemented the three-year work program for two consecutive years are also subject to cancellation.

Earlier this week, the President declared a moratorium on the cutting and harvesting of timber in the natural and residual forests nationwide to stop deforestation, which has been blamed for the floods and landslides that have claimed lives, displaced families, and damaged millions of pesos worth of property.

Government figures show that the floods and landslides last year killed 36 people and injured 32 others, displaced 118,728 families, and damaged P142.31 million worth of property and infrastructure. –Othel V. Campos and Joyce Pangco Pañares, Manila Standard Today