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By James Konstantin Galvez, Reporter
Environmental activists on Monday
held a picket at the office of the Netherlands-based ABN-AMRO bank
to protest its funding of the controversial Lafayette Mining project
on the island of Rapu-Rapu in Albay.
The protesters numbering close to
100 and belonging to the Kalikasan-Peoples Network for the
Environment and other cause-oriented groups trooped to the bank’s
office Monday about 11 a.m. and staged a brief program dramatizing
the alleged risks posed by the project to the people’s health and
the environment.
“We want ABN-AMRO to pull out
their financial investment in Lafayette’s destructive and dirty
mining project on Rapu-Rapu Island. The bank made a mistake in
financing the project, which has already caused environmental
tragedies, economic dislocation and social miseries to the local
people,” said the group’s national coordinator, Clemente
Bautista.
Activists in Legazpi City, Albay,
where the project is located, also staged a similar rally.
He said that the risk is very
high for the highly respected banking institution to invest, adding
that Lafayette Mining Ltd., an Australian company which owns and
operates the mine, has yet to fully address the issue of acid mine
drainage caused by the project’s mine tailings.
The protesters also tried to
present a copy of an international petition signed by over 800
environmentalists from 27 countries and local residents exhorting
the bank to withdraw financial support to the project but no bank
representative attended the half-hour rally.
Bautista said the mass action was
part of an internationally coordinated protest against the Dutch
institution with protest actions also taking place in Hong Kong and
at the bank’s main office in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
In an e-mail message, Theo Droog,
chairman of the Nederlans-Filippijnse Solidariteitsbeweging, a
Dutch-Filipino solidarity group in the Netherlands, said they would
try their best to let the Dutch public know that the bank is funding
a mining project without social acceptability of the local
communities where it is located.
“We are very concerned about
the situation on Rapu-Rapu Island not just over the environmental
damage, but also over the social impacts. We fear that the
Philippine government will use its security forces to try to silence
opposition to the mining projects as it did in the past,” said
Droog’s message, adding that they will get the support of the
Dutch people, especially the bank’s clients to pressure the
institution to withdraw their financial investment.
ANZ of Australia, KFSX of South
Korea and the United Kingdom-based Standard Chartered Bank are also
funding the controversial project.
It was part of the flagship
project of the Arroyo administration to revive the country’s
ailing mining industry and give a boost to the local economy and
generate taxes to the government’s coffers.
According to the National
Economic Development Authority (NEDA), the 4,663 hectares project
has a reserve of about 5.9 million metric tons of mineral ores with
an annual production of 10,000 metric tons of copper, 14,000 of
silver and 600,000 ounces of zinc.
NEDA estimated potential gross
sales of $41 million annually with the government gaining some $800
million in taxes a year and an employment of 274 during commercial
operations.
But the project was dogged by
controversies. In October 2005 the project’s open-pit mining
resulted in two mine tailings spills that caused cyanide
contamination and fishkills in the area, while in December last
year, heavy rains from Supertyphoon Reming hit the mining area
causing its mine infrastructure heavy damage.
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