TVI and NCIP’s FPIC team accuse each other of negligence

TVI and NCIP’s FPIC team accuse each other of negligence

By Tito Natividad Fiel, DIOPIM Committee on Mining Issues (DCMI)

22nd June 2007

Paduan, Candiz, Siocon Zamboanga Del Norte – The management of TVI Pacific and the leader of the Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) team of the National Commission on Indigenous People (NCIP) Region 9 accused each other of failing to do their respective tasks.

On the recent FPIC process in Paduan, it is claimed that the NCIP Regional Office team failed to validate the exact location and number of people to be affected by TVI’s mining expansion plans. Engineer Abdol Puengan, of the NCIP’s FPIC team, claimed this was due to the company’s failure to submit the location map and operational plan.

“Until this point in time, the proponent [TVI] has failed to submit a location map as required by NCIP to determine the exact location and number of people to be affected”, Engineer Abdol Puengan warned the company.

But Jonathan Bañes, the manager of TVI’s Community Relation and Development Office (CREDO), accused the NCIP’s team of not properly reviewing the results of the Field Base Investigation (FBI) report conducted by the NCIP Provincial Office. He noted their application specifically named the coordinates of the affected area and barangays [villages], but the NCIP’s Field Base Investigator in Zamboanga Del Norte failed to validate exactly which they are, although they should apparently be in a position to know.

While the two sides were blaming each other, the Subanon People led by Timuay Jose “Boy” Anoy pointed to the discrepancies and anomalies in the FBI report of Lista Cawanan Jr., the director of NCIP Zamboanga del Norte.

Onsino Mato, the Secretary of Timuay Jose “Boy” Anoy, noted that the Cawanan report indicates that the FBI was meant to have been done in 2005, but this is disputed by many of the people who should have been interviewed for the investigation.

It was also noted that the FBI report fails to cover TVI’s application for expansion in areas such as Sitio Kuyan, which is inside the ancestral claim of Timuay Fernando “Nanding” Mudai. The NCIP had failed to contact Timuay Mudai in this regard.