MANKAYAN, Benguet – Small-scale mining associations in the municipality expressed their readiness to deliver the resources they individually and collectively produced as assistance to the badly needy survivors of the Taal volcano eruption.
Mayor Frenzel A. Ayong disclosed that the officials of the pocket mining associations approached him recently expressing their desire to extend whatever resources they can produce for the survivors of the Taal volcano eruption being inherently kind hearted and touched by the state at which the affected peoples are as shown in the media.
However, he said the municipal government will coordinate with the concerned offices and local governments in the area so the aid will go to the area that need it most considering the enormous assistance given by individuals, government agencies, local governments and corporations that had been conducting relief operations in the calamity-stricken areas in the Batangas and Cavite provinces.
“We will make sure the assistance provided by our pocket miners and other interested associations from the municipality will be given to those who are readily in need of such aid that is why we are closely working with the concerned offices for them to pinpoint the evacuation centers which have not yet been properly served,” Mayor Ayong stressed.
The municipal chief executive pointed out pocket miners of the municipality are inherently kind hearted despite the existing temporary ban on small-scale mining operations in the different parts of the Cordillera that has deprived them income from their portals.
According to him, the pocket miners had been actively involved in civic activities such as in the previous demolition and building of the temporary schoolbuilding of the Lepanto National High School that was burned and the clearing of the debris that covered a classroom of the Bulalacao National High School, among other important activities they participated in since he assumed the town’s mayoralty post.
Mayor Ayong expressed his gratitude to the groups of pocket miners for coming out with the initiative of raising the resources to be delivered to the survivors of the Taal volcano eruption who had been evacuated to the different parts of the affected provinces.
Initially, the pocket miner’s groups committed to raise resources that will fill up two 10-wheeler trucks.
Mankayan is one of the first class towns and one of the 3 municipalities relying on mining as its major source of income for the local government.
By Hent
