Officials of the Region 12 police and two other state law-enforcement agencies are to intensify their crackdown on small-scale copper and gold mining in Tampakan, South Cotabato after two miners got drowned in rampaging floodwaters that swept through their clandestine mine site in the municipality.

Local executives and police officials in South Cotabato had reported that the incident left two residents, Johnry Samling and Richard Sumali, dead. They also confirmed that Samling and Sumali were engaged in “banlas,” or sluice gold mining using only farming tools and portable motor-driven water pumps.

Geologists in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Mines Geosciences Bureau and mining engineers from Europe and Australia had placed at no less than US$ 200 billion the value of copper and gold deposits in Blaan ancestral lands in Tampakan, waiting to be mined.

Radio reports on Wednesday, August 13, in Central Mindanao cities and provinces stated that officials of the Police Regional Office-12, under Brig. Gen. Romeo Juan Macapaz, and Felix Alicer and Efren Carido, directors of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-12 and the Mines and Geosciences Bureau-12, respectively, are to cooperate in addressing the banlas operations in Tampakan.

The three officials had separately said the national government had only contracted one legitimate firm, the Sagittarius Mines Incorporated, or SMI, to mine for copper and gold in Tampakan, but has not started operating still since its inception some two decades ago.

Senior officials of the DENR-12 and MGB-12 and employees of the SMI and traditional leaders in Tampakan have long been cooperating in addressing banlas activities in the municipality even as the firm has not operated the Tampakan Copper-Gold Project yet as contracted by Malacañang, according to municipal officials and ethnic Blaan leaders.

“Our personnel in the field shall flex their authority and work with the police and the military in preventing these illegal activities,” Alicer said. “We appreciate the efforts of public groups, one of which is the SMI, in helping us address the issue, which they do in the spirit of volunteerism.”

Mayors and Blaan tribal leaders in Tampakan, in Columbio in Sultan Kudarat, in Malungon in Sarangani and in Kiblawan in Davao del Sur that are to be covered by the soon to start Tampakan Copper-Gold Project had confirmed that their constituents and the SMI, in fact, together planted no less than 1.2 million forest tree seedlings in hinterlands in their municipalities in the past seven years as their joint environmental-protection effort.

“We in PRO-12 will support extensively the efforts of the DENR-12 and the MGB 12 in putting an end to all forms of illegal mining activities in that municipality,” Macapaz said.

DENR-12 and MGB-12 employees had told reporters that legitimate mining firms have extensive environmental-protection thrusts in areas permitted to operate by the government.

Photo shows the mineral-rich Blaan ancestral lands in Tampakan, South Cotabato, guarded by different government agencies, the police and military against small-scale illegal gold miners. (August 14, 2025, South Cotabato, Region 12)