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BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya: Gov. Luisa Lloren Cuaresma,
apparently slighted by the seeming disregard of a foreign mining
firm for the provincial government’s “cease and desist order,”
on Tuesday advised officials of the Australian mining firm to just
leave the province if it could not pay the taxes and fees being
collected by her administration.
“If you can’t pay, then
better get out,” the irate Cuaresma told officials of the
Australian-owned Oceana Gold Phils. led by Jake Foronda, general
manager of its Didipio Gold-Copper Project, at the field office of
the province’s Environment and Natural Resources Office in the
said mining village in Kasibu, Nueva Viscaya, where the firm is
conducting mining exploration activity.
Cuaresma, along with members of
the provincial board led by Vice Gov. Jose Gambito and other
provincial officials had gone the other day to Didipio to have the
said order implemented and pressure Oceana Gold officials to pay the
taxes and fees which the provincial government was charging for its
quarrying activities.
But the mining firm refused to
pay, insisting that the said activity was part and parcel of
construction being undertaken by the firm.
Cuaresma’s cease and desist
order to Oceana Gold stemmed from its failure to pay all provincial
taxes relating to its quarrying activities in the said village,
which provincial officials had estimated to be some P25 million.
“It is only right that the
provincial government make this order against the mining firm. This
is an expression of the provincial government’s power under the
local government code,” said Vice Governor Gambito, who also
chairs the 14-member provincial board.
The national government expects
to collect around P30 billion from Didipio project’s 15-year
operation, aside from the millions of local taxes and thousands of
jobs to be generated for the town residents.
Meanwhile, Gambito said that the
provincial board is readying a resolution authored by Board Member
Tony Dupiano withdrawing its support for the Didipio project, which
they endorsed unanimously in 2006, if the said firm would not pay
the taxes it owes the provincial government.
Officials of the said mining firm
led by Foronda met with the provincial officials at the field office
of the provincial government’s Environment and Natural Resources
Office in Didipio. The officials led by Cuaresma had earlier gone
there in full force accompanied by elements of the Philippine
National Police and the provincial security division.
Cuaresma, however, stressed that
her administration was not questioning Oceana Gold’s whole mining
activity per se, but only their nonpayment of fees for the quarrying
activities being conducted by their subcontractor, Delta Earth
Moving.
“We are asking only for what is
due to the provincial government, but if they continue to ignore us
or refuse our reasonable demands, that is another matter,” she
said.
Earlier, the mining firm
executives cited Environment Secretary Lito Atienza’s letter to
Cuaresma which said that under the Mining Act of 1998, there was no
need for a mining firm like Oceana Gold which has a Financial and
Technical Assistance Agreement (FTAA) with the national government
to file for a quarry permit with the provincial government and pay
any necessary fees.
They later requested that the
provincial government give them time to study its request and for
the quarrying to be allowed to continue, but the governor turned
this down.
In his earlier letter to Cuaresma,
Atienza said that according to Section 48 of the Philippine Mining
Act of 1995, “a (FTAA) contractor has the right to extract and
remove sand and gravel and other minerals without need of a permit .
. . within the area covered by the mining agreement for the
exclusive use in the mining operations.”
The mining firm had also earlier
said that the activity that the provincial government called
quarrying was essential to its ongoing construction activities and
should not be taxed by the provincial government.
But, Gambito, a lawyer, insisted
that in the opinion of the provincial government, the quarrying
activity was fully under the activities it could levy taxes on based
on the local government code.
--Francis C. Hidalgo Jr.
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