STATEMENT ON SIANA INCIDENT
We, the Bishop, Clergy and Council of the IFI Diocese of Surigao, empathize with the residents of Brgy. Siana, Mainit, Surigao del Norte for the discomfort, dislocation, and suffering they experience at the moment brought about by the landslide coming from the tailings pond of Greenstone Resources Corporation (GRC) which gave way due to series of earthquakes yesterday, May 11, 2024. We feel their pain and trauma as they narrowly escaped the harrowing experience of death and as they find themselves displaced at evacuation center. Though there were no casualties but the loss of properties is more than enough to cause for their unsubstantiated anxiety especially in these times of economic crises. No amount of reasoning from GRC and even from the local and provincial government could justify this tragic, sad fate that residents do not deserved.
Operations of large mining companies in Surigao del Norte Province have really tolled a heavy environmental and social cost to our people. The Siana Incident is a fresh reminder of the folly of large scale mining and the fallacy that it would factor economic development as the province still remains poor in the national standing.
We, in the IFI Diocese of Surigao, continue to voice out our opposition to the presence and operation of large scale mining in the province which resort to highly extractive, open pit mining. We persist to call for the scrapping of Mining Act of 1995 that turns the province as laboratory of open pit mining and deforms our nature.
We call on the local and provincial government to stand for the people, for their well-being, for their communities, and for the environment as against the continuing operation of large scale mining companies which plunder our mineral resources and destroy our rich biodiversity. We ask government officials to stop using these large scale mining companies as sources for easy, goodwill money that only goes to their pockets. It is now time to spur genuine development through wise use of public funds that are only wasted by severe corruption, traditional politics, and political patronage.
We ask people in Surigao del Norte Province to take a critical look on the presence and operation of large-scale mining companies in the province in terms of their environmental and social costs, especially that Surigao del Norte lies within major faults which are prone to earthquakes. We are all defenseless against the wrath and fury of nature as we have experienced, in past and present times.
We ask that we hold on to the Risen Lord to give us courage and hope in overcoming our situation.
++RHEE
IFI Bishop of Surigao
May 12, 2024
Surigao City
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