LAST week’s landslide in Pantukan, Compostela Valley which claimed some 30 lives is not the first and certainly not the last. Yes, despite the dramatic actions and fighting words of the Cabinet officials who have visited the ill-fated site. We’ve had similar disasters several times before and the ensuing drama after each one had almost always never changed.
Everything now seems predi-ctable–upon learning about the catastrophe, government factotums, media, genuine do-gooders and plain kibitzers would descend on the disaster site. However, after the last media story has been written, everybody hurries back to Manila and back to business as usual. Until the next disaster.
Sorry about the seeming cynicism, but really after six Presidents, we still have to see a real honest-to-goodness solution in the horizon to this particular problem in Compostela Valley. In fact, we have reason to fear that the problem will worsen with more mineral rich areas found and attracting more small scale miners made more daredevil by their hungry stomach.
Some people would say that the Pantukan landslide, like the killer floods in the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan last month, was a natural occurrence. Of course, it was. However, unregulated mining in the already landslide-prone area was manmade. The failure of local government officials to enforce the “no habitation” policy in hazardous mining tunnels was a human failure, as was building tunnels in the loosening mountainsides.
We think blame should be placed entirely, as usual, on the lack of political will of all levels of government to enforce applicable laws. This perennial problem in governance , we ‘re afraid, is going to worsen with the mid-term elections just around the corner. Still, we look up to President Noynoy’s transformational govern-ment for deliverance and pray to the heavens that we are not wrong in hoping.
