Activists picket embassy to protest mine investor

By Jonathan L. Mayuga
Correspondent
Business Mirror
June 12, 2008


ENVIRONMENTAL activists on Thursday picketed the South Korean Embassy in Makati City and demanded the pullout of Korean investments in the administration’s flagship mining project in Rapu Rapu Island , Albay.

The protest action, according to Kalikasan-People’s Network for the Environment (Kalikasan-PNE) should send a strong signal to the Korean government of how their business will be in the Philippines as far as mining is concerned.

Last April 2008, Philco Resources Ltd.—which is jointly owned by LG Metals and Kores Inc.—gained majority control of Lafayette Philippines Inc. (LPI). Lafayette is previously an Australian-owned company, which operates the Rapu Rapu Polymetallic Mining Project.

Bayani Agabin, former spokesperson of LPI, confirmed that the Korean government through Kores, its investment arm, is taking over the operation and is optimistic of generating income in its first year of operation.

Agabin said the company is, in fact, infusing $30 million to boost Lafayette ’s operation in Rapu Rapu Island , confident that with the new systems in place, it is ready to resume commercial operation.

He said the additional investment will ensure the safety of operations to prevent a repeat of the accidental chemical spill in 2005, which prompted the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to investigate and suspend its operation.

The Filipino management team, which used to run the Australian interest resigned from the company last week after negotiations with the new owners fell through.

“There is no reason to continue the Lafayette mining project. Its three-year operation in Rapu Rapu Island has brought so much environmental destruction, community displacements, human-rights violations and livelihood loss to the local people,” Clemente Bautista, national coordinator of Kalikasan-PNE said.

Lafayette was found liable by the Philippine government in November 2005 of contaminating the waters in Rapu Rapu with cyanide and was fined P10 million for damages, as a result of two accidental mine spills, a landslide and a reported fishkill, which happened during the operation of Lafayette from June 2005 to October 2007.

This resulted in Lafayette Mining Ltd., the Australian listed-parent company, being placed under voluntary administration. The local companies filed a petition for rehabilitation with the Pasig courts in February.

Bautista reiterated that the Rapu Rapu mine should be closed for good instead of being sold to another mining investor.

“We have reiterated before that large-scale mining is not technically, economically and socially feasible in the small-island ecosystem of Rapu Rapu. The Korean companies are not welcome in the island and they will suffer the same fate of Lafayette ,” Arieto Radores, spokesman of Umalpaska-Bikol, an antimining-plunder alliance in the region stressed.

Mines and Geosciences Bureau previously ordered Lafayette to pay P134 million to ensure that the environment around the mine site is restored and rehabilitated in the event that the project is abandoned. “The Arroyo government has not learned its lesson from its bankrupt flagship- mining project. As the mining project in Rapu Rapu continues to be anti-people, anti-environment and serves only the interest of foreigners and corrupt government officials, it will fail and be kicked out of the island,” Bautista said.

LPI was the first foreign firm to operate a mine in the Philippines after a law granting full foreign ownership of local-mining projects was upheld by the courts in late 2004.

Its Rapu Rapu mine was forecast to generate revenues of $350 million a year from annual production of 10,000 tons of copper in concentrate, 14,000 tons of zinc in concentrate, 50,000 ounces of gold and 600,000 ounces of silver.

The mine facility, which resumed operations in February last year after its suspension, is operating at just over half of its daily processing capacity of 3,000 tons of ore.