The Manila Times Internet Edition | TOP STORIES > It’s time govt gave small miners a break

It generates or supports thousands of formal and informal small enterprises and businesses where they thrive, usually in ancillary support industries or support services.

Many subsistence miners are involved in gold mining in the metals sector, and in sand and gravel extraction in the nonmetallic sector. Individual or family mining businesses are in aggregates used in construction, and in industrial minerals (feldspar, silica, limestone).

Now, the small mining sector is the basis of the advocacy of a segment of antimining liberalization advocates that wants government to set up more controls on foreign mining investments, while encouraging the participation of small-money Filipinos in the industry.

“Small-scale mining is wasteful since there is lesser recovery of the desired metals. In fact, the waste products of the small miners are even sold to the big-time processors,” said Ricaredo Saturay, a geologist who teaches at the University of the Philippines National Institute of Geological Sciences.

“The small miners cannot afford the technology needed to make their production more efficient and environmentally-friendly since it is expensive. Only large companies could afford these technologies,” added Saturay.

“It is saddening that small miners are always blamed for the pollution in the industry since they use technologies that are less environmentally friendly,” he lamented.

Many small miners are only involved in gold production, since producing other minerals uses more expensive technologies. In extracting gold from the ore, small-scale miners use cyanide and mercury, which are highly toxic to miners, their communities and the over-all environment.

Technology employed include traditional pick-and-shovel concerns to mechanized and sophisticated operations which use the same methods as large mining companies, as in the case of gold processing and extraction. Underground mining (stoping) methods are also commonly practiced in the gold mines.

Gold-processing techniques include the more sophisticated gold-recovery methods involving cyanide digestion followed by precipitation with zinc dust or with activated carbon. The general method of gold recovery is by gold panning, a gravity-concentration process using pans and sluice boxes. An amalgamation process using mercury which adheres to the gold and is evaporated using direct heat is also used, particularly in gold-rush areas.

Saturay explained that since there are more small-scale miners in the Philippines, they have probably produced more value now that many mining companies have closed shop. In fact, they even sell to the Bangko Sentral, although the quota set for them is high. The black market readily buys their gold, with their buyers being mainly jewelry makers and similar establishments.

While small, the small-scale mining sector is known to have contributed 40-50 percent of the country’s total gold production from 1990 to 1999. This percentage is believed to have been a major factor in recent closures of large gold-mining operations.

Many small-scale miners are native to the places where they mine, like in the Cordilleras, Diwalwal in Southern Mindanao, and Aroroy in Masbate, where gold mines can be found. Unlike banks and other businesses, they readily spread their capital around in the places where they operate. This explains the proliferation of other industries where small mining operations are.

The government has to help the small miners if we are to optimize the gains from the small mining operations, said Saturay. Existing legislation limits the level of investment for small-scale mining operations to P10 million (about $200,000). Still, since they are at the bottom end of the sector, small miners may have very limited or no monetary investment at all apart from their own labor.

To date, the government has enacted specific small-scale mining laws and regulations, including a separate set of safety rules. It has established a small-scale mining unit within the Mines and Geoscience Bureau to support and regulate the sector. It has also decentralized the issuing and control of small-scale mining permits and licenses to local government units.

These measures are not enough, said Saturay, who suggested that the government recognize the formal and informal claims made by the small miners on some of the mining sites of the country. Some small-scale miners, such as those in the Cordilleras, Mount Diwalwal and Aroroy, Masbate, have expressed fears that their mining sites will be counted among those being offered to foreign investors.

“The government has to support cooperatives of small miners. They need technical assistance, for instance, in making their tunnels. They need a lot of assistance, rather than condemnation so they would be less environmentally destructive and more productive,” said Saturay.

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