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—Mining in Eastern Samar’s Homonhon Island has been so rampant that locals started asking: “Would there still be something left for our children?”
“We do not know if there would still be something left [of the island],” Carmi Macapagao, a resident of Guiuan and president of the Homonhon Environmental Advocates and Rights Defenders (Heard), said.
Since 1983, mining companies have extracted minerals from the 10,400-hectare island known for its vast deposits of nickel and chromite, which are both essential in the production of stainless steel.
Macapagao told INQUIRER.net that mining in the 1980s was only small scale, but by 2009, large scale mining started on the island where almost 5,000 individuals are residing now.
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She said that out of the eight barangays, five have active mining operations. The rest, or three barangays, have none, but there is still an approved Mineral Production Sharing Agreement (MPSA).
Based on a list by the Mining Tenements Management Division of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau, there are four mining companies with MPSAs on Homonhon Island, however, only three are “active”.
Mt. Sinai Mining Exploration & Development Corp. has no active operation.
The MPSA is an agreement between the government and a contractor which grants the latter the “exclusive right to conduct mining operations within the contract area.” Then in exchange, “the government is given a share in the production.”
The MGB said that Nickelace Inc. and Chromiteking Inc. have a contract area of 2,005.9616 hectares and 1,500.000 hectares, while EMRC and Mt. Sinai Mining Exploration & Development Corp. cover 279.1378 hectares and 510.1601hectares.
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Macapagao, however, pointed out that some of the mining companies with MPSAs, like Nickelace Inc. and Chromiteking Inc., have “operators”:
Global Min-Met Resources Corp.’s mining operations are within the 800-hectare area of Nickelace Inc.’s contract area, while Verum Terra Geoscience Inc. and Pacific Prime Metals and Resources Inc. cover 500 hectares and 700 hectares.
Three of the companies that are mining nickel and chromite from the island had been ordered closed by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in 2017:
EMRC, however, was one of the five companies given approval by the Office of the President in 2020 “after complying with mining laws,” a report by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism stated.
