VHeadline Venezuela News reports: Hundreds of unemployed small-scale and artesanal gold miners have been blockading the local offices of the Environment & Renewable Natural Resources (MinAmb) Ministry in the regional capital of Ciudad Bolivar since Monday and they say they will NOT end the civil protest until they get paid what's owing to them after two years of waiting for the Venezuelan government to live up to its promises.
According to the local newspaper, Nueva Prensa de Guayana, one of the protesters, Thomas Aray, says that they had trusted the federal government when it originally made the compensation payment offer two years ago but the payments never materialized and affected families in the small mining communities in the south of Bolivar State are suffering the consequences, unable to count on decent jobs.
Basic Industries & Mines (Mibam) Minister Rodolfo Sanz has said that pay-outs to local miners in the La Camorra sector would begin next Monday (August 25) and that further payments will be made beginning next Wednesday (August 27) in Ciudad Bolivar.
However, government officials do not appear to have taken into account that many of the most impoverished miners simply do not have the financial resources to travel all the way to the state capital and that even if they do sacrifice food for their families to buy bus tickets, they will face further problems when they have to fill out lengthy forms to actually lay their hands on the money.
- All the while, and allegedly in collusion with regional government executives, the situation is plagued by the presence of corrupt 'agent-facilitators' who charge exorbitant fees to 'assist' illiterate claimants to plow through piles of unnecessary bureaucracy to finally get what is rightfully theirs.
El Merey miner's wife, Raquel Nunez, says that she and her husband are going to camp out in front of the Ministry of the Environment's regional office until the payment owing to her husband is made: "we've spent two years waiting while the government has been sleeping, doing nothing."
VHeadline Venezuela News
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