Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Former congressman Rodriguez Acosta believes that Act "nationalization" opens a large gap to the livelihoods of small-scale mining.

Maria Ramirez Hair

The former parliamentarian said that the statute "imposes a society in which the small miner is the weak person who works and produces, and the stronger the government"

The former national Deputy for the State of Bolívar, Rafael Rodríguez Acosta, believes that the law reserving State activities of exploration, exploitation and marketing of the gold, creates a government monopoly that cause serious effects on the social and economic life of the entity.

Rodriguez Acosta, who chaired the subcommittee for several years mining special national parliament, said, through a communique that the effect on small-scale mining of this "exclusive instrument," "is catastrophic" as it reduces it to an item under rigorous control of the government and subjected to a sort of permanent tolls.

Also raised, "imposes a society in which the small miner is the weak person who works and produces, and the stronger the government, using the stick and takes much without the right to claim by the weak so penalty of being accused of violating the law. "

Rodríguez Acosta stated that this "monopoly Act" impacts life and the form of subsistence of some 500 thousand miners of Guayana and their families, as well as shops, pottery workshops, carriers, service companies and an entire region, from Caicara del Orinoco until Santa Elena de Uairén, whose economic livelihood revolves around the diamond and gold mining activity.

The former Deputy believes the law legalizes the already excessive discretion of the State on mining activity and introduces more severely to the modality of attacks to the mining communities.

He announced that as it always has done, is placed next to the mining struggles for a correction in this legal instrument, which, he said, represents the death of artisanal and industrial "as still a good deal for individuals to become an excellent business for the government and a nutritious source of corruption. "