By Annabel Consuelo Petinglay/Philippine News Agency
SAN JOSE DE BUENAVISTA, Antique — The Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) has clarified that there is no sand and gravel being quarried in the province of Antique and being shipped to China.
MGB Regional Director Roger A. de Dios said in an interview Tuesday that he has no knowledge of any Mineral Ore Export Permit (MOEP) applicant in Antique or even in Western Visayas.
“There has been no Mineral Ore Export Permit (MOEP) applicant since October when I assumed as director,” he said.
He added that as the Provincial Mining Regulatory board chairman of Antique he also has no knowledge of a large scale quarrying permittee in the province.
“There are right now 94 permittees in Antique but there is no large scale permittee,” he said.
He said that large-scale permittee that transports sand and gravel internationally would need a 50,000-ton cargo vessel to transport 30,000 cubic sand and gravel.
“In Antique, the cargo vessels that dock on its port are only about 3,000 tons,” he said.
He said it is impossible as it will be very costly for other permittees of sand and gravel to do “double handling” by using a smaller vessel from Antique and then transferring it to a bigger vessel for China.
Meanwhile, Provincial Environmental and Natural Resources Officer Andres Untal, who was with De Dios during the interview, said if there are sand and gravel being shipped from Antique, it is only within the Philippines.
“If you see the paper trail the shipment are in Guimaras, Negros Occidental, Palawan, Mindoro and Romblon,” Untal said.
De Dios added that he has also heard that there is shipment to Kalayaan Island because of the ongoing construction of infrastructure there, but still it is within the Philippines.
The MGB director said that it is also a welcome move for Antique Governor Rhodora J. Cadiao to ask the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to conduct an investigation on who is behind the alleged quarry operations being shipped to China. She said her administration won’t allow such activity without proper documentation.
Cadiao gave this challenge to the NBI last April 26 during the groundbreaking of its PHP50 million three-story district office in San Jose de Buenavista led by Assistant Director Menardo Grasparil de Lemos.
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