Mining engineering course reopens in Baguio

BAGUIO CITY, Philippines – The constant rise in prices of gold and other metals has prompted Saint Louis University here to re-open its mining engineering department after an absence of more than 20 years. Jose Ernesto Villaluna, president of the Philex Mining Corporation in Benguet, said job opportunities for mining engineers are high even as SLU closed this department in 1987 for lack of enrollees. Philex is now partly funding the reopening of the engineering department with a P1-million financial assistance for SLU’s mining laboratory. Villaluna said that other schools in the world stopped offering mining engineering after the slump of the price of gold and other metals in the ‘80s. He said that the construction boom in China due to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and other huge projects caused this upsurge of price of gold, copper and others. In the ‘80s, mining in Benguet declined forcing many senior mining engineers to work in Indonesia, Villaluna said. With the open-arms policy of the Aquino administration for mining, Villaluna was hopeful that Filipino mining engineers would return home. - GMANews.TV