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Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Colombia: Accidents expose risks of illegal mining

“Here, they tell us to help protect our work and our land, and that once the multinational corporations arrive, we won’t have anything to do because we aren’t trained like the outsiders are,” he said.
Sixty-one percent of miners in Colombia have only a primary education; 23% have a high school education and 6% have some form of higher education, according to the Ministry of Mines and Energy.
Between August 2010 and the first five months of 2014, the National Unit against Illegal Mining of the National Police’s Carabineros Directorate intervened in about 3,000 illegal mines, according to Col. Wilson Chaparro of the National Police.
Four hundred-fifty operations resulted in the suspension or closure of 1,181 of these mines. Since 2010, 5,500 suspects involved in criminal mining have been arrested.
The authorities also have seized 111 kilograms of gold and 980 kilograms of mercury – a highly toxic element used in the gold-separating process.
http://infosurhoy.com/en_GB/articles/saii/features/main/2014/07/08/feature-01

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