Gold makes it hard for Pantukan villagers to leave

To many villagers in Pantukan, the lure of gold far outweighs the danger of living in a place threatened by landslides.

Mining is not only the main occupation in Compostela Valley, it is its lifeline, said the province’s governor, Arturo T. Uy. Some 30,000 families in the province depend on small-scale mining, according to Uy.

That is why it is next to impossible persuading the people to give up their homes and jobs and live in a safer place.

Uy has a big problem on his hands once the national government shuts down the mines in Pantukan and level the houses that were spared by Thursday’s landslide as a way of preventing another disaster.

“As much as we want to relocate them, you can just imagine there are too many of them,” he said. “How do we give them another livelihood?”

Because gold sells at P2,000 per gram, the miners are reluctant to leave. “Even if you give them land, they will still choose to mine,” he said.

Nonito Ricaña was injured when the earth, rock and mud swept down from the mountain, smashing Sitios Diat 1 and Diat Dos. He is among the lucky ones; the landslide killed close to 30 people, and scores more are still missing.

The 44-year-old Ricaña, who is originally from Kiamba, Sarangani, has lived in Diat Dos for the past decade. He admitted they were warned last year to leave the area following a landslide.

He decided to stay.

Antonio Dayami, 47, lost his 7-year-old-son Kristoffer in Thursday’s tragedy.

“There was no warning that this would happen. We always thought it wasn’t dangerous. But now I feel I am to blame. My son would have been alive still,” Dayami said as he kept vigil near his son’s white coffin on a roadside in Pantukan.

“He wanted to become a lawyer so that one day he could support our family,” he said.

Ricaña, too, feels the villagers were partly to blame for ignoring the authorities’ warning.

“Our village head told us in September last year to leave the area but it was my decision to stay,” Ricaña said in an interview at the Davao Regional Hospital in Tagum City.

Some residents of Sitio Diat Dos thought they were not in harm’s way.

“We never expected this to come because we live in Diat Dos,” said Lourdes Macion, a widow who pans for gold. “What we understood was that only the residents of Diat Uno were told to leave because the place was not safe.”

Diat 1 and Diat Dos are just two of the 21 areas in Pantukan “waiting for a disaster to happen,” said Edilberto L. Arreza, regional director of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) 11.

“We are worried for them and we want the mayor to strictly implement the no-habitation policy,” said Arreza.

But Macion is not about to pack and leave. “My relatives have been living there for 19 years. Now we are told to start again somewhere else. But we can’t do that because we rely on the mountains.”

Panning gold brings as much as P5,000 a week for Macion. “I’m a widow and I need to raise my son,” she said.

Compostela Valley nestles on the East Mindanao Ridge where world-class copper and gold deposits are found. The Australia-based Mining Group Limited estimates there are 5 billion pounds of copper and 10.3 million ounces of gold in Kingking, 10 million oz. of gold in Diwalwal, among others.

By MICK M. BASA

mb.com.ph

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