Review of mine operations delayed anew

The start of the pending review of mine operations shuttered or suspended by former environment chief Regina Paz Lopez has once again been pushed back to early next year due to funding problems, the Department of Finance said.

“As usual, the deadline was moved, as what had happened several times already. Again, we had to deal with bureaucracy. But we can probably say we are closer now than where we were before. We are incrementally closer now to starting—we have the pool of experts already, the contracts are ready for signing, the terms of reference are ready. It’s a question of funds,” Finance Undersecretary Bayani H. Agabin told reporters recently.

To recall, the interagency Mining Industry Coordinating Council (MICC) as early as the first half of this year was supposed to undertake a review of the 26 mining sites ordered shut down or suspended by Lopez in February.

The MICC, formed through Executive Order (EO) No. 79 issued by former President Aquino in 2012, is mandated to conduct a multi-stakeholder review of mining operations every two years, but it had been unable to do so.

Agabin said they could finally start the review process by the second week of January as the DOF and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources have committed to provide funding of P15 million and P10 million, respectively, although these have yet to be released.

Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III and Environment Secretary Roy A. Cimatu co-chair the Cabinet-level MICC.

“The MICC doesn’t have a fixed budget. And under EO 79, each agency there is supposed to shell out, but they were scrounging around and there were only two volunteers, the DOF and the DENR, and so we have to scrounge also for funds. And in the government, these things take time—looking for funds and putting it there,” Agabin said. —BEN O. DE VERA