Pantukan tragedy: PNoy’s last wake-up call to end oppressive economic policy - Bayan

April 28, 2011



Pantukan tragedy: PNoy’s last wake-up call to end oppressive economic policy - Bayan



Davao City – We offer our sympathies to the families of those who perished in the landslide in Pantukan. Most of them and those who remain missing are the abanteros of small-scale mining tunnels who scour the earth with their bare hands for a living.



Sadly, in the wake of the tragedy, we hear government putting a blame on the victims themselves whom it forgets are the very people who are not supposed to end up dead had there been enough opportunities for them to cope with hard life.



Worst, Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) director himself, Leo Jasareno, takes advantage of the situation by declaring a shift to policies that are prejudicial to the small-scale mining and in favor of the large-scale and foreign-backed mining..



It is unnerving for this top bureaucrat of the Aquino administration to say that the Pantukan disaster is “the last wake-up call of the government to cut back on small mining operations” while sparing, on the other hand, the 1,600 hectare area of the U.S.-backed mining company Nationwide Development Corporation (Nadecor) within the tragedy site in Pantukan, from such declaration.



But Jasareno, understandably, is just playing well for his master. After all, he is serving an administration that has constantly pursued an economic agenda of promoting more foreign investments and public-private partnerships in industries, one of which is mining.



In fact, just as President Aquino ordered a nationwide logging moratorium but failed to cancel logging permits of large logging concessions, he has rejected 903 pending mining applications from mostly Filipino corporations, while favorably endorsing 247 foreign-backed applications for processing.



Duplicity from the Aquino administration is the last thing Filipinos need at this time.



Mining areas have been the veritable graveyard of poor Filipinos, like the abanteros whose cheap labor are being exploited by the capitalists so the country may fulfill its tragic role of being a mere provider of cheap raw material exports to foreign economies.



The Pantukan tragedy will always be a reminder of the harshness that life has been for the country’s poor. For this, it should be the Aquino government’s last wake-up call instead to reverse its oppressive economic policy that has made the people suffer long enough.#



For Bagong Alyansang Makabayan-Southern Mindanao Region (Bayan-SMR),


FRANCHIE BUHAYAN
Secretary General
0999.195.3370