CITY OF MALOLOS–Illegally quarried Bulacan minerals and natural resources are also being sold online through social media market places.
Bulacan Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Office (BENRO) personnel seized 6 truck loads of illegally quarried more than 500 cubic meters of escombro (rock boulder) and gravel and sand in series of entrapment and buy bust operations in Sta. Maria, Pandi and Angat towns on Saturday.
BENRO chief Atty. Julius Degala said their office had managed to determine the online selling through Facebook market place pages and accounts and immediately set then the buy bust and entrapment operations.
Escombro are stones used as fillers, as hollow blocks for construction and as garden and landscape designs.
Two elf trucks loaded with the said illegally quarried and mined escombro and gravel and sand materials were seized in each quarry sites in Barangay Camangyanan, Sta. Maria and stockpiles in Barangay Paltok, Angat and Barangay Cacarong Matanda in Pandi town.
Degala said the nearly P30,000 worth of mineral products at P3,000-4,000 each truck load were bound for deliveries in different areas in the province.
Degala said their office can confiscate up to P300,000 worth of illegally quarried and mined escombro and gravel and sand materials in the three quarry site areas.
BENRO is now determining the quarry owners and operators for filing of violations of RA 7942 (mineral theft) and violations to Provincial Ordinance C-005 or the Bulacan Provincial Environment Code and Executive Order No. 21 of Gov. Daniel Fernando on Aug. 16 which suspends the operation of all quarry and mining operations.
In Barangay Lambakin in Marilao town on Friday, illegal quarry owner and operator Victor Sta. Rosa and his eight quarrymen Virgilio Cabucoy, Jesus Cabucoy, Pelagio Cuervo, William Lorenzo, William Jocson, Melchor Carida, Jerry Abunda and Jun Pacios were arrested after they were caught in the act of extracting escombro.
Degala’s men seized 470.5 cubic meters of escombro worth around P17,000.
The quarry owner and operators were charged with violations of RA 7942 (mineral theft) and violations to Provincial Ordinance C-005 or the Bulacan Provincial Environment Code and Fernando’s Executive Order No. 21.
All the quarried escombro materials that could reach up to more than P300,000 will also be confiscated, Degala also said.
