VHeadline Venezuela News reports: Angry gold miners have returned to the streets of Ciudad Bolivar demanding the immediate payment of monies due to them under a government "conversion" plan to compensate them for having to give up small-scale and artesanal mining in the south of Bolivar State which has done so much damage to the environment over recent years.
Individual amounts of Bs.F 10,000 (about US$4,600) had been promised paid just before last Sunday's local and regional elections across Venezuela and many of the demonstrators believe they were tricked into voting for the pro-Chavez United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) on false promises that were never realized.
Admittedly some payments were made prior to the elections but many miners found that the checks they presented at the banks were returned because of insufficient funds in the payee accounts belonging to the Basic Industries & Mining Ministry (Mibam) led by Minister Rodolfo Sanz who is also president of the juggernaut state-owned Venezuelan Guayana Corporation (CVG) group of industries.
Striking miners' spokesman William Rivas Alberto Carvajal says they were given a firm date for the payments which are already many years overdue, but State Governor Francisco Rangel Gomez, recently re-elected to office, has not followed up on President Hugo Chavez' direct orders for the miners to be paid without leaving anyone out in the cold. "We were kicked off our mine working at Chiguao and Chiguaito and we have not been afforded any shelter whatsoever. What we are asking for it is that someone addresses our complaints and resolves the problem so that we can finally achieve justice."
Miner Angel Balcazar says that he attended a ceremony on November 20 at a local park where Mibam Minister Rodolfo Sanz made great show of delivering payments to the mining community ... as long as the TV cameras were focused on him!
"He (Sanz) handed out checks for about a thousand miners and then left more than five thousand without their payments. Deputy Mibam minister, Ricardo Vilchez, then pledged to give us our checks on Tuesday or Wednesday ... but we have not had any answers so far!"
Another miner, Eugenio Osta says that "we miners what to become contributing members of society, but there are as many of us outside and excluded as there are inside mining. They reach agreements with transnationals to exploit the mines, and all we ask is that we should get to work for them and that we are not excluded."
Some miners have gone so far as to allege corruption in the debt payments and have called on the authorities to look into the alleged irregularities. Nirvia Rivas, describing himself as a miner's legal representative, has called for Minister Sanz to fulfill the promises made and to provide answers on when and where the payments are to be made to those who have been "lost in data" supposedly somewhere in between Ciudad Bolivar and HQ in Caracas.
VHeadline Venzuela News
vheadline@gmail.com
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