Looking for Work in the Dark

The company I'm working for is bidding for two other projects in The Philippines.  One is to the west of Manila, across the bay and the other is in kidnap central, Mindanao.  I find it amazing that the directors of this organisation believe that they can price these projects without ever actually having visited the locations to determine what the actual site conditions are.  No two projects are the same and here in The Philippines the conditions, either geographically, economically, with regard to the access or security,  may vary considerably, which if not accounted for will leave the project floundering and running out of cash.  And you can't always see everything from Google Earth.

I pointed this out and the light bulb of thought suddenly lit up in the heads of the learned directors.  As a consequence I was asked to go and take a look at the project in Mindanao at a place called Taganito (it was too late to visit the one near Manila).

The nearest airport is in Surigao, on the northern tip of Mindanao.  There are no direct flights from Iloilo so we had to fly via Cebu, nearly not making it at all as the flight from Cebu to Surigao had been overbooked, and we had to wait whilst Cebu Pacific tried to bribe other passenger off the flight so we could go.

The airport at Surigao, and I use the term "airport" loosely as it's more like a landing strip, is tiny with over-grown edges to the runway and a large shed that serves as the terminal building.

On arrival at the airport we immediately headed to Taganito.  Mindanao doesn't seem to be suffering from the drought quite like Panay is.  It was generally very green  and the hilly landscape covered in palms and trees had a pleasing look to it.  During the 90 minute drive to Taganito, following the coastline, the surrounding sea was dotted with emerald islands with white sandy beaches so I could see there was potential for good quality R&R should we find ourselves undertaking the project. 

However, any ideas I may have had of an idyllic lifestyle were soon wiped out by cloud of red dust.   Taganito is essentially a huge mine where the earth is being stripped away to extract nickel.  High grade material is sent to Japan for refining but there are plans to refine the low grade materials on site and hence a power plant is required to allow this to happen.  Unfortunately, there seems to be very little environmental controls in place.  The small fishing village of Taganito is covered in red dust from the earth being extracted.  The mine doesn't seem to have any erosion controls in place so during rainfall the soil washes into the river, which in turn flows into the sea turning it red and and has consequently covered the the beaches.  This seems to be compounded by the spillages that occur during loading of the barges for shipping the material to Japan.

I read that part of the reason that there was a rebellion and uprising in Mindanao was due to the mineral exploitation with out any tangible benefit to the local population and this place certainly seemed to support that.  We were told that the expats, principally Japanese and Koreans, all travelled with armed guards as a precaution against potential kidnapping.   There wasn't any accommodation within easy travel distance and so the mine had a labour camp on site.  Having lived on labour camps in other parts of the world I don't think our staff would relish the thought of having the spend 6 months on this one and especially in place as grim as this.

Surigao Bay Early Morning

Having garnered as much information as we could we headed back to Surigao where we were to spend the night as there were no flights back to Cebu/Iloilo the same day.  The hotel we stayed in (Hotel Tavern) overlooked the bay which was great view and I spent the early evening wandering along the promenade.

View from the Hotel Window

The next morning we flew back to Iloilo.  The tiny terminal at Surigao was chaotic and struggled to contain all those wanting to check in.  Iloilo isn't great but I was glad to get back to some civilisation and having not to worry about being kidnapped and being held for ransom.