ANTIPOLO CITY — As the country celebrates Children’s Month, concerned residents and churchgoers ar juvenile mendicants and solvent sniffers whose numbers in this pilgrimage city are noticeably getting larger.

This was the observation of those visiting the city every Sunday to attend Holy Mass at the Cathedral Shrine of the Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage. Some of the motorists said the street mendicants, who are either solvent sniffers or parking attendants, can be seen sitting by the roadside beside a popular fastfood chain branch near the cathedral.

A 16-year-old street dweller told this reporter that most of them are out-of-school youth who only go home every other day to bathe and change clothes. Money from alms and solvent sniffing, he said, keep them in the streets. (Nel B. Andrade)

Pot Session Busted

BIÑAN CITY, Laguna — An active policeman assigned to the National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) and two others were nabbed during a “shabu” pot session in Barangay San Antonio, here, over the weekend.

Supt. Joel Pernito, local chief of police, identified the suspects as Police Officer 2 Dennis Arenas, 42, assigned at Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig City, and cohorts Sherwin Aycardo, Romulo Barinuevo.

Pernito said his men were verifying reports on the alleged drug session in Barangay San Antonio when they chanced upon the suspects in the act of sniffing shabu inside a house in Barangay San Antonio at 1:10 p.m. Sunday.

A certain Sonny Castillo managed to elude arrest during the arrest.Several drug paraphernalia were recovered by police team in their operation. (Ferdinand F. Castro)

Kalinga Wants Ricefield Saved

TABUK CITY, Kalinga — Hundreds of civic leaders in the different parts of lower Kalinga vowed to defend at all cost their ricefields from being converted into wastelands by mine tailings because of the impending conduct of exploration activities by several mining companies and the eventual full blown mining operation in the upper towns.

The concerned farmer, religious, youth, elderly and civic leaders were united in asserting that they will not allow a repetition of their sad experiences during the operation of the Batong Buhay Gold Mines, Inc. in Balatoc, Pasil town in the early 1980s when mine tailings dumped by the firm in the Pasil river cemented the surfaces of their rice paddies thereby choking and eventually killing their rice plants.

The Pasil River is a tributary of the Chico River which serves as a major source of irrigation water that irrigates vast tracks of agricultural lands in the city and nearby Quezon, Isabela.

For the past four years, a mining company has been prospecting to reopen the Batong Buhay mines while several mining companies have also applied to conduct exploration activities in various parts of the province.

If mining will be allowed in the upper towns of Kalinga, Tabuk City and other low-lying towns will surely become a desert in the next several years because of the huge volume of waste being dumped into the various river systems.

While the Batong Buhay Mines was operating, concerned residents noticed that portions of their paddies where irrigation water entered was allegedly hardened by white sediments that stunted the growth of their rice plans that greatly affected their harvests over the past several years. (Dexter A. See)