NAGA CITY, Cebu, Philippines — In line with the celebration of Environment Month this June, the Region 7 office of the Mines and Geo-sciences Bureau (MGB) of the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), along with the Apo Cement Corporation (ACC) Thursday hosted a mine tour highlighting the importance of community involvement in its environment protection program.

“We are lucky we have a good relationship with our host community as this is very important since they help us in monitoring our operation,” said ACC environment, health and safety engineer Jenevy Patalingjug.

She said the company maintains regular communication with several non-government organizations taking part in the multipartite monitoring team to sustain its operations environment protection program.

“In fact we no longer talk about complaints here because our focus now is on development projects as we continue holding stakeholders’ fora to hear the community’s sentiments,” she said.

Patalingjug said they are open to hear community concerns as this helps much in improving ACC’s environment protection program.

Meanwhile, ACC reported spending nearly P3 million on livelihood projects, infrastructure assistance and educational and medical programs under its Social Development and Management Program (SDMP) last year.

MGB7 Regional Director Loreto B. Alburo also said government recognizes that development of the mining community hosting the mining project as well as surrounding areas is a responsibility shared by the mining contractor and government.

He added that such responsibility starts from the exploration stage through mine development and construction, production, and finally, mine closure.

SDMPs are prepared by the company in partnership with the host and neighboring communities and will be used to implement plans, projects and activities of the company to better improve the living standards of the host and neighboring communities through the creation of responsible, self-reliant, and resource-based communities capable of developing, implementing, and managing community development programs, projects and activities in a manner consistent with people empowerment.

Philippine Mining Act of 1995 (RA 7942) states that a mining firm shall set aside yearly a minimum of 1.5 percent of its direct mining and milling costs for the development of the community; and mining technology and geosciences. Of the amount, 90 percent should be apportioned for the SDMP implementation and the remaining 10 percent will go to the development of mining technology and geosciences.