Three men from Tagbina were in police custody at Barobo, Surigao del Sur, after a raid on an illegal mining site in the upland Barangay Bahi. Police aged them at 33, 34 and 45. SunStar Philippines dated the operation Saturday, June 27; another report put it a day later.
Local police worked with personnel from the Mines and Geosciences Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the Monitoring and Information Assistance Center. According to the Philippine National Police (PNP), the Regional Mobile Force Battalion 13 and the Barobo Municipal Police Station also took part.
The men could not produce permits for their mining. Police said they were caught extracting minerals without the required permit, a violation of Republic Act No. 7942, the Philippine Mining Act of 1995. They are being held at the Barobo station and face charges under that law.
What was seized
Police took water pumps and a backhoe that they say were used in the digging. SunStar put the equipment at about P5 million. The PNP’s own tally was higher: mining equipment and mineral ores worth an estimated P7,109,900.
Bahi is known for its mineral wealth, and unauthorized extraction there is a growing worry.
The PNP chief’s comments
PNP Chief Police General Jose Melencio Nartatez Jr. praised the teams for working closely with their partner agencies. “I commend our operating teams for carrying out this operation professionally and in close coordination with our partner agencies,” he said.
He also said, in Filipino, that the job goes beyond enforcing the law: protecting nature for future generations is a responsibility too.
Nartatez admitted that watching over vast forestlands and protected areas is hard. Enforcement, he said, depends on steady coordination and on the public. He urged people to report activity that harms the environment and their communities. The campaign, he added, follows the national government’s call for agencies to step up environmental protection in rural areas exposed to illegal logging and mining.
After the raid, he told regional directors and police commanders to work more closely with the DENR on operations against illegal mining and logging across the country. The PNP, he said, is also ready to train forest rangers and to help set up better channels for sharing information.
Sources
- 3 ‘illegal miners’ arrested in Surigao del Sur
- 3 Arrested, P7.1M in Equipment and Ores Seized in Surigao del Sur Illegal Mining Raid
