They are paying fines and conducting operations that will help clean up the toxic river. The real concern here should be the conducts of the small-scale miners.
Small-scale miners are miners who do not work for a certain mining company but work on their own to extract minerals and they themselves sell the mined products. As President Romualdez said, these small-scale miners smuggle gold out of the country oftentimes because of their claim that they can earn more if they sell to foreigners, rather than to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) who withhold a 7% tax on their sales. What these small-scale miners fail to understand is that all the minerals in the Philippines belong to the state. Miners, whether small-scale or under large-scale mining companies, are merely people who dig up the minerals. And so, the Philippine government should naturally receive an adequate percentage of the income from mining by imposing a tax. These small-scale miners are those who also fail to abide by the mining law set by the government. Some of them even practice illegal mining wherein they do not have legal permits approved by the government at all. They're just mining at their own expense. Small-scale miners are the ones who excrete mine tailings in soil and rivers without a plan on how to clean up afterwards. Most of them use mercury, which is highly toxic for humans and the environment, in separating minerals because it known to be cheaper than the cyanide used by the mining companies. So not only do miners affect the revenues we can receive from mining but they also damage the environment.
Large-scale mining companies on the other hand, such as MacroAsia Coporation, Philex Corporation and Nickel Asia Coporation are known for practicing what we call responsible mining. Responsible mining is mining which follows the laws set by our government. They have approved permits, they do not smuggle gold out of our country and most of all our government gets their fair share of the tax imposed on whatever their generated revenue is.