Note #9160 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:
06122 Feb. 22, 2006
Church leaders urge Philippines to revoke logging, mining permits
WCC delegates pause to pray for victims of Leyte landslide
by Maurice Malanes Ecumenical News International
PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil - The Philippine government must rethink its policy on such industries as logging and mining to avert future disasters, delegates from the Asian country said during the World Council of Churches (WCC) Assembly here.
"It's time our government stops big-scale mining and logging and supports a no-nonsense community-run reforestation program," Erlinda Senturias, president of Southern Christian College, told Ecumenical News International during a break in proceedings at the Feb. 14-23 meeting.
Senturias and other delegates watched on television as a landslide buried an estimated 500 houses, as well as a school packed with 246 children, in the village of Guinsaugon in St. Bernard in southern Leyte in the central Philippines on Feb. 17.
Rescue officials said between 1,500 and 2,500 people might have been buried in the mud, which cascaded from a nearby hill after two weeks of incessant rains.
"It's also time government listens to the churches," said Winnie Tering, a delegate from the United Church of Christ in the Philippines.
She was referring to a pastoral statement issued by the Roman Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines in early February urging the government to ban large-scale mining and to cancel all permits already given to big foreign and local companies.
Church representatives gathered in the southern Brazil city to pray for victims and survivors of the Philippine disaster. At the same time, Jenny Borden, interim director of the WCC-supported Action by Churches Together (ACT) International, reported from Geneva that the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP) had started shipping bottled water, blankets and plastic sheets to survivors.
NCCP relief personnel were to fly to Leyte to assess survivors' other needs, Borden said.
"In the short term, we in the church really have to help in extending relief as well as helping the victims recover from their suffering and trauma through counseling," Senturias said, "but in the long term, both church and government must include disaster-preparedness and ecology-based policies in their development programs."
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