In my own personal opinion, I think that the government is a bit too greedy enough. In short, it is “unfair”.
Let us first start with the fee in acquiring a treasure hunting permit. The application fee actually costs ten thousand pesos (10,000 Php). This is already considered a lot of money to average Filipinos.
What I am trying to say is that, small time treasure hunters cannot afford to pay the fee in acquiring the permit. This is the main reason why they have to take the risk of proceeding on their operation in the hope that they won’t get caught.
Assuming that you acquired a permit and then you have successfully recovered a certain treasure. This does not mean that all the treasures becomes your own property.
According to the Philippine Treasure Hunting Law, the government is entitled seventy five percent of the treasure’s value while you who recovered them will only receive twenty five percent. This kind of sharing applies when you excavated the treasure on a public land.
While on a private owned land, the government gets a thirty percent share while the remaining seventy percent goes to the land owner and treasure hunters.
Isn’t really appropriate for the government to receive more or equal share to the treasure hunters who did all the work in recovering the treasure?
All what they actually do is to issue a permit which costs some amount of money in the pockets of treasure hunters and that’s all. They won’t even provide any assistance in the site. All they have to do is to wait comfortably in their office.
In my own personal opinion, the government shouldn’t be too greedy enough where they should revise the number in a more appropriate amount. Or, let the finder decide the sharing percentage.
I have been reading Elmo Zugwalt’s blog (https://treasurehunt.club/) for several years now and I do agree with his own opinion. I wouldn’t also mind giving seventy percent of what I recover to the government provided that the share won’t be going deep inside the pocket of the corrupt officials.
Sadly, the Philippine government is full of corruption which is a thing that might not ever change.
