The gap in the safety knowledge between the small-scale miners and local mining monitoring body in the Philippines

Abstract

Small-scale mining is one of the most unsafe human activities in the Philippines. This paper aims to measure the gap between the concept of safety among miners and the local government mining monitoring body. This study checked the difference in percentage of exposure of miners on hazards in mining sites based on their perception and the perception of officials of local government mining monitoring body specifically the Department of Environment and Natural Resources at the provincial (PENRO) and municipal (MENRO) levels and the local level disaster risk management (LLDRM). An assessment tool was developed and used in three mining sites. To compare their agreement on safety, the study used Cohen’s kappa, a statistical tool for assessing inter-rater reliability when observing categorical variables. There was a big difference in the knowledge of safety and safety standards for miners and monitoring officials.