DENR Does 'Tokhang'

You could call it the Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ version of “tokhang,” the controversial police campaign to visit suspected drug users in order to convince them to mend their ways. Except that the police appeared to have a real basis for identifying those involved in the drug trade, while DENR doesn’t even want to disclose how it went after the mining companies that it shut down last week.

Let’s make this plain at the start: If the mining companies ordered shuttered by Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Regina Lopez violated the law, then by all means, they should be shut down.

But Lopez, who ordered the closure of 23 mining sites across the country and the suspension of five others, also needs, at the very least, to declare the specific violations that precipitated her action. Sadly, Lopez refuses to release the results of the purported seven-month audit that she conducted on the mining industry, on which the closures and suspensions are reportedly based.

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