Paracale Gold

In the Philippines, gold deposits are can be found in many areas. Smallscale gold mining is thus widespread, employing perhaps as many a 500,000 people across the country. There are essentially two types of small-scale mining in the Philippines: “indigenous”, which is carried out by communities or tribes for collective benefit and somewhat self-regulated by social norms and ritual, and “gold rush mining” which attracts poor migrants an others who work a site until it is considered empty and then move on. Most child labour is found in the latter. Children working in small-scale mines generally work alongside older family members in different steps of the processing and provide support services. The typical child gold miner is a boy between the ages of 15 – 17 years old who is a school dropout and who contributes about 30 per cent of the overall family income. Girls are sometimes involved, particularly in panning, but generally are exploited in other ways – by having to forego education to look after younger siblings are perform household chores, or worse by getting pulled into prostitution or domestic labour for third parties.
In the Philippines, children participate in a particularly dangerous gold mining practice called compressor mining. Here child miners dive into and open, muddy well perhaps two metres wide and up to seven metres deep. They extract soil in a murky environment with zero visibility wearing crude eye masks and breathing oxygen from a tube with the help of a compressor. The miner works in a squatting position, anchoring himself with elbows or knees pressed against the walls while shovelling mud into sacks. He usually stays down anywhere from three to five hours before taking a break.
“Paracale is a gold-rich municipality, 27km northwest of the provincial capital of Camarines Norte.
In Paracale, compressor miners usually operated through offshore makeshift mining houses.
The provincial government in January of this year allegedly cancelled the permits of all small-scale mining operations in Camarines Norte, one of the areas in the country that have sizeable minerals, especially gold deposits.”

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