The Catholic Church is demanding an investigation into the real cause of the accident at a mining site in Paracale, Camarines Norte that is believed to have caused the death of at least 12 miners. The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said only three of the 12 miners have been identified and they have only recovered one body, identified as 23-year-old Julian Cabarubia, on Thursday afternoon.
Another body was recovered on Saturday, but Bicol regional civil defense director Raffy Alejandro said the only identified fatalities are Cabarubia, Carlo Salen, 37 and Luis Sayson, 33.
Alejandro said the minders were trapped in a 200-foot-deep pit around 5 p.m. of Tuesday when the pit suddenly filled with water while they were conduction “guerilla mining.”
Camarines Norte provincial police chief Senior Supt. Juan Capinpin said the mining operation was being financed by a certain Agosto Jordan.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources has already ordered an investigation into the accident and Mines and Geosciences Bureau regional director Theodore Rommel Pestano said the explosion occurred in the property of United Paragon Mining Corp.
Pestano said an explosion may have caused water from the sea to flood into the collapsed area and trap the small-scale miners because the tunnel was near the shoreline.
The Catholic Church in Camarines Norte is conducting its own investigation into the mining accident and Rev. Edwin Visda, social action director of the Diocese of Daet, said they are conducting their own probe because of “attempts to cover up the tragedy.”
The priest said initial findings indicate that the mine collapsed because of a dynamite explosion, but the he admitted “there are news reports that are contradictory to what the people there are saying about the cause of the collapse which is dynamite explosion.”
“The sad news of course is that the financier will not admit this because of his liabilities to the law but that’s what really happened,” he said, adding that there were actually eight tunnels that collapsed.
“Logically, if there are eight holes, there could have been more than three people there,” said Visda.
According to him, it is the fourth such incident in Paracale this year. The others, he said, were not reported in the media because mining operators managed to cover them up.
Sunday 25 november 2012
http://manilastandardtoday.com/2012/11/25/church-probe-mine-mishap/
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