Since last Thursday, March 2, Bajo Cauca Antioqueño has been experiencing a tense situation due to the strike called by mining workers in the area due to the reactivation of national government operations to control illegal mining.
The situation is quite complex because the mining economy is a large part of the income of the inhabitants of the area, which leads them, seeing their source of income at risk, to take actions in which the most affected are the same inhabitants who we cannot stigmatize or fall into the error of generalization.
The people of the area have seen decade after decade how tons of gold and therefore billions of pesos pass through its corridors, which do not return in taxes or investment for the territory and that in contrast all they have are hospitals in poor condition, destroyed tertiary roads, little or no academic offer and countless situations that do not reflect economic activity with the quality of life of the inhabitants.
But what is the problem now? 85% of the gold in Bajo Cauca is part of illegal mining and therefore more than 5,600 million dollars have stopped entering via taxes, which also means that the owners of these businesses get rich while the ancestral and artisanal miners also If they cannot compete, they end up working for them as cheap labor.
Today this activity has become a large network, as it has found buyers outside the country that makes the business profitable and allows them to strengthen themselves and create an organization that goes not only from extraction, but even reaches other spheres to continue controlling the business, that is why one of the urgency is to attack the criminal structures that have the big investors that generate chaos and continue to impoverish those in the territory.
One of the requests of those who are currently unemployed is that Bajo Cauca become a mining district and from the government of President Petro there is the will to carry it out, in fact, the environment minister Susana Muhamad, has been up to date to create the roadmap that allows it to be carried out, this would allow them to become formalized, be more competitive and have greater guarantees in the development of their activities.
It is also necessary to carry out a technical and real census of small ancestral and artisanal miners, to recognize their work, reaching a consensus on issues of environmental and social management of their economic activity and of course generating public policies that allow the economic return of the mining activity to the territory. In the legislature, the discussion of the reform of the mining code will take place and with this it is expected to advance in the search for a solution to the problems of this activity.
The government has been advancing in joint tables that allow the recovery of the public order situation in Bajo Cauca Antioqueño and from my position in the House of Representatives and as a person who has been there on several occasions I am available to generate actions of dialogue with the community.