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Benguet Corp earns P0.5 M monthly from ‘entrance fees’

Local miners bled dry

BAGUIO CITY (Jan. 3) — Benguet Corporation (BC) earns P15,000 per day or P450,000 a month from “entrance fees” it collects from 1,000 small scale miners who work its L-070 open pit mine site in Sitio Antamok, Brgy. Loacan in Itogon, Benguet.

A 48-year old miner who has worked under BC since 2002 reveals that BC does not even spend a centavo on the maintenance of the mine site. The man ways are left unlit, ventilation facilities destroyed and the rotting timber and iron railings emit fatal gas inside tunnels, he says.

“Dakami a ti mangitrabtrabaho kadagiti pagnaan tapno nasaysayaat a maka-abante kami,” (It is us who work the man ways to be able to work further ahead) the respondent told Nordis.

“Nadagsen ti P15 nga inaldaw ngem an-anusan mi ta awan met ti sabali a panggedan.” (P15 a day as entrance fee is too much but we have to make do because we do not have any other work)

He confides that in 2003, a miner fainted inside a tunnel and died from to toxic gas. The company did not even help financially to the grieving family, he says.

Sharing arrangements

According to the miner, the company collects the daily fees through a pocket miners’ association which entered into a contract mining venture with the company. Unlike in the Acupan and Balatoc mine sites where the company gets 50% of the total mine ore production and takes care of milling all the ore, BC leaves the milling to the Antamok miners.

Miners in all of BC’s partnership mines have to rent the ball mill at P100 per load to process the gold ore. In Acupan and Balatoc, however, the company processes all the ore and keeps the tailings for further processing. Private ball mill owners get the tailings. Seventy per cent of the gold are recovered in the tailings when further subjected to the carbon-in-pulp (CIP) mill.

In Acupan, each 25 kilo-sack of the tailings commands P75-P100. Ball mill operators near the Antamok mines either sell the tailings or process it in privately-owned CIP mills.

Not yet earning

The workers are grouped into smaller kumpanya who work certain destinos underground. Our respondent’s company has been working its destino for three years now and has not hit any ore body.

“Awan ti produksyon isunga makisagsagaok kami kadagiti kumpanya a nakatsamba,” (We have not produced so we ask other companies who have found the ore.). Sagaok is an indigenous equity-sharing scheme among Cordillera small scale miners.

The company, he says, has a sure earning while the miners sweat it out with no assurance of compensation for a day’s toil inside the mines. He also wants the company to rehabilitate the mines or at least provide materials for its maintenance.

Late last year, the price of gold peaked at $450 per ounce and is expected to rise.

BC’s partnership mining scheme is among those listed as “best practice” in wealth-sharing by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources two years ago. Its L-1500 in Acupan mine site, also in Itogon, was barricaded by surrounding communities for its possible adverse effects on the communities and the environment. Local small scale miners also rejected its terms and conditions that the company offered the contract to miners from other provinces in the Cordillera region. # Lyn V. Ramo for NORDIS

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