P12M Philex fund benefits village folk
>> Sunday, June 24, 2012
TUBA, Benguet – Thousands of villagers living in dozens
of host and neighboring communities are now benefitting from four livelihood
projects funded by the P12 million livelihood fund released by the Philex
Mining Corp.
Gilbert Olayo, supervisor of Philex’s community relations
department, said the company spent over P6 million to start up the aquaculture
and livestock raising of the Damon clan; P5 million was used to provide the
equipment and training of personnel for the meat processing center and P1
million was provided for the coffee growers within the mine camp.
According to him, the aquaculture project now produces at
least 600 kilos of tilapia every four months and the same is supplied to host
and neighboring communities while the livestock project that has over 200 pigs
and piglets serves as the source of quality meat for the meat processing center
and fresh meat needed by the over 2,000 families within the mine camp and another
1,000 families in host and neighboring communities.
“Philex wants to ensure that people living in its host
and neighboring communities have sustainable source of livelihood even beyond
mine life so that they will continue to earn sufficient income for their
respective livelihood,” Olayosaid, adding community-based livelihood projects
are now the main focus of the company’s social development management program
(SDMP) in order to leave behind a descent legacy for the host and neighboring
communities.
On the meat processing which is now being managed by the
Community-based Training Center Meat producers Cooperative, Olayosaid around
4,500 kilos of meat is now being processed into home-made products such as the
famous longanisa, sisig, tocino, tapa that could match the quality of
commercially-produced ones.
Because of the growing demand for the processed meat
products from the cooperative, Olayosaid they are now tapping the market in the
Baguio and Benguet areas, thus, the cooperative is expected to process around
10,000 kilos of meat in a month in order to generate more income that could be
plowed back for the improvement of the living condition of the beneficiaries.
For the company’s coffee project, Olayo disclosed around
1,000 Arabica and Robusta coffee plants are now bearing fruits in a 3-hectare
land area within the mine camp while another 700 coffee plants are also grown
in another area where their fruits are ready to be harvested once they ripen
and ready to be sold to interested buyers of the coffee beans for processing
into quality coffee.
“We want to make the
livelihood projects sustainable and self-liquidating so that those who will be
left behind will continue to reap its fruits and help improve the living
condition of the villagers around the mine site,” he said, adding that the
projected mine life of Philex is until year 2020,
He said the mining company is fully supportive of the
endeavor of host and neighboring communities to establish their own sources of
livelihood to make living conditions in the countryside better compared to the
previous conditions when the mine was not existent.
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