A predawn raid by the police on an illegal mining site netted ten illegal miners extracting gold at a new gold rush area in a remote village in Opol town in Misamis Oriental last Friday, October 18.
Opol town police investigator Rodel Suaybaguio said the police teams also confiscated two dump trucks, eight motorcycles, and 300 sacks of gold ore worth P6.7 million.
Suaybaguio said the raid was conducted by a joint team of policemen from Opol and Manticao towns acting on information relayed by barangay residents.
He said the new gold rush area is located in Barangay Limonda, a remote village in Opol town, reachable only via a rough road in Manticao town.
“We left Opol around 1 am Friday and went to Manticao. We reached Barangay Limonda around 4am. Three hours of rough riding,” Suaybaguio said.
Suaybaguio said they caught the illegal miners in the act of transporting the sacks of ore for delivery to clandestine ball mill machines operating in Manticao town.
He said miners used motorcycles to transport the sacks of gold ores to waiting dump trucks.
A resident who asked not to be identified said Barangay Limonda is the new gold rush area where farmers leave their farms to join miners extracting the ore from the Iponan River.
“Even children are now used by the parents to mine for gold. Many children have stopped going to school to join their parents,” he said.
In 2013, a Writ of Kalikasan was issued to protect the Iponan river and mandated various government agencies to join the protection of the fragile ecosystem.
