About 340 kilometers south of Manila, Jun (not his real name) took the time to entertain visitors at his small-scale gold mining facility. It was a busy Saturday afternoon, as it usually is at the facility which operates 24/7, but Jun didn’t mind taking some time off to show the visitors around. “Okay lang, hindi naman palaging may bumibisita dito (it’s okay since we don’t always have visitors here),” he said reassuringly.
Amidst the loud and persistent rumbling and clanking of mills crushing ores, he tried to explain the cost of their operation. “Sa calamansi pa lang, gumagastos kami ng Php 100,000 kada buwan (We spend Php 100,000 per month on calamansi alone),” he shared, which would explain the stench permeating throughout the area. He further revealed that they spend about 1 million pesos per month on electricity and buy 40 kilograms of mercury, which at the time, cost around Php 8,000 per kilogram.
One would wonder how much gold this operation extracts in a month with such high operational costs, which don’t yet include the salaries of nearly 100 workers. But that was not the main purpose of the visitors. The last bit of information, the amount of mercury being used in the mining facility, is what the visiting team from the environmental NGO BAN Toxics was primarily after.
BAN Toxics has been at the forefront of the campaign to eliminate mercury and mercury compounds for more than a decade. The group is one of the first NGOs to work closely with artisanal.
