VHeadline Venezuela News reports: Southern Bolivar State miners have occupied the offices of the Basic Industries & Mining (Mibam) Ministry in Ciudad Bolivar, demand payment of compensation promised by the Mibam Minister Rodolfo Sanz. The compensation related to controversial conversions of mining rights which have basically thrown local small-scale and artesanal miners out of their previous mine workings to make way for industrial-scale transnational corporations which are themselves in a state of paralysis while the central government dilly-dallies on final clearances to begin mining operations.

Raul Leoni miners representative Alfredo Villanueva says many projects have been promised by Minister Sanz with attendant jobs for local workers but they are fed up waiting for payments and/or compensation that was promised as part of the deal reached with Mibam TWO YEARS ago ... and all the while, people are left without jobs.

Villanueva says the population of La Paragua has been left abandoned to its own resorts ... roads are inaccessible, a local hospital has been without without doctors and/or medical supplies for more than a year and public water supplies are out of reach as well as power lines bringing electricity to the area. "Miners are starving ... three months ago Mibam Minister Sanz committed himself to honoring the payments, however ... but we have seen neither hide nor hair of any money."

Within hours of the occupation of Mibam offices in Ciudad Bolivar, the vice president of the state-owned heavy industry conglomerate, the Venezuelan Guayana Corporation (CVG), Alfredo Arcila arrived to assure the demonstrators that Rodolfo Sanz is addressing the problem and that he will give answers on Thursday (August 7) in a specially convened meeting with miners at 6:00 p.m. at Mibam headquarters in Puerto Ordaz.

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