[fsf60k] Fwd: Nicaragua Network Hotline--December 15, 2009
- From: michael cipoletti <ikecip@xxxxxxx>
- To: FSF60K@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:35:10 -0500
and the article on electricity in telica as well..
mc
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Nicaragua Network <nicanet@xxxxxxxx>
> Date: December 16, 2009 2:32:00 PM EST
> To: ikecip@xxxxxxx
> Subject: Nicaragua Network Hotline--December 15, 2009
> Reply-To: kathy@xxxxxxxx
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> Nicaragua Network Hotline
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> December 15, 2009
> 1. Sugar companies oppose bill to help sick sugar workers
> 2. Government resolves 52 more property cases
> 3. Government increases electricity generation 50% in only three years
> 4. Sandinista doctors improve health care in the countryside
> 5. Nicaraguan officials attend ALBA and Climate Summits
> 6. Nicaraguan armed forces carry out operations against drug traffickers on
> Atlantic Coast
>
> Topic 1: Sugar companies oppose bill to help sick sugar workers
>
> The National Committee of Sugar Producers (CNPA) attacked a bill presented to
> the National Assembly to address high levels of Chronic Renal Insufficiency
> (CRI) in the areas where sugar cane is grown in Nicaragua. The Committee said
> that sugar growers and processors do not accept any relationship between the
> sugar industry and CRI.
>
> The bill is the result of nine months work by the National Multi-Sector
> Commission established by the National Assembly to address the problem. It
> studied the preliminary results of a study by the National Autonomous
> University of Nicaragua (UNAN-Leon) on the causes of CRI which showed that
> agricultural activity, principally the growing of sugar cane but also of
> bananas and peanuts, had a direct relationship to the kidney disease suffered
> by the workers and by the population living near the plantations.
>
> "Based on this data," said Dr. Wilfredo Barreto, chair of the Commission,
> "the executive committee began to put together two documents: a Protocol of
> Understanding to include both government and the private sugar industry as
> responsible parties that must provide an answer in the short term to the
> demands of the affected workers; and a law that would provide a legal
> instrument to resolve the matter in a more definitive fashion through the
> promotion of good production practices in the agricultural sector." The law
> if passed would regulate the use of agrochemicals, working conditions,
> workplace safety and hygiene. It would also address the use of contractors
> and sub-contractors who provide workers for the plantations and thus
> supposedly provide a degree of separation between the owners and the workers
> and limit legal responsibility.
>
> The CNPA, representing the sugar companies, reacted immediately with paid ads
> in the principal daily newspapers attacking Lopez and saying that the
> companies provided an "excellent health system to protect workers and their
> families." The ads said the companies maintained "vigorous business
> responsibility practices in which protection of the environment occupies a
> fundamental place." The CNPA attacked "the sectors that want to discredit our
> industry and that promote distorted information about kidney disease,
> generating antagonisms that have only obstructed the search for an
> explanation for and a solution to this public health problem."
>
> For nine months, a group of former sugar workers from the San Antonio Sugar
> Mill, supported by the International Union of Food and Agricultural Workers
> (UITA), has been attempting to engage officials of Nicaragua Sugar Estates in
> dialogue about possible compensation for their condition with no progress.
> Meanwhile over 3,500 workers out of an estimated 8,000 ill workers have died.
>
> For information about a boycott of Flor de Caña Rum organized by a group of
> Nicaraguan young people, visit here.
>
> Topic 2: Government resolves 52 more property cases
>
> Attorney General Hernan Estrada announced that his office has resolved 52
> more claims by U.S. citizens for property compensation since July 2009 and
> has received a letter of recognition from U.S. Ambassador Robert Callahan.
> Estrada said that the government had resolved 43 cases and the U.S.
> recognized that in nine other cases the claimants had no right to
> compensation for a total of 52. He noted that these cases came under Article
> 527 of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act of 1994-5. [This article said that
> U.S. aid must be cut off to any country that had confiscated or nationalized
> property belonging to a U.S. citizen until compensation was made or unless
> the U.S. president granted a waiver. The article has been interpreted to
> apply retroactively to Nicaraguans who became U.S. citizens after their
> property was confiscated by the Sandinista revolution in the 1980s. Each July
> since the law was passed the US has granted a waiver based on progress made
> in resolving property claims.]
>
> Estrada also announced that the government has given property titles to just
> over 55,000 families in the less than three years it has been in power, many
> more than the number issued by the three previous administrations over 16
> years. He said that the number of US citizens compensated for property
> totaled 300 in three years of Sandinista government.
>
> Topic 3: Government increases electricity generation 50% in only three years
>
> On December 10, President Daniel Ortega inaugurated the second stage of the
> geothermal project San Jacinto-Tizate in Telica, Leon, which will generate 46
> megawatts of electricity in 2011 and 72 megawatts the following year. The
> first stage of the project, which currently produces 10 megawatts of
> electricity, cost US$57 million while the second phase will cost US$92
> million. Ortega explained that Nicaragua has increased its electricity
> generation capacity by 150 megawatts since he assumed the presidency in 2007.
> Another 70 megawatts will come on-line in January followed by another 40
> megawatts in April for a total of 260 megawatts, half again as much as the
> 520 megawatts being produced when he came into office.
>
> Ortega noted that geothermal electricity production began with the Patricio
> Arguello Ryan Geothermal Plant in 1983 but it currently runs at only 50% of
> capacity. "That was a state-owned plant privatized in the 1990s. They tell us
> that privatization is supposed to be good for a plant, not bad, and that
> whoever acquires the plant will invest in it so as to not only maintain
> production, but increase it," Ortega said. If the company had invested and
> done new explorations, "certainly that plant would be generating not only the
> 60 megawatts it generated in 1983, but much more," he added.
>
> Ortega said that the country has sources of renewable energy, but because of
> lack of investment and lack of a policy to invest in renewable energy, the
> country developed a dependency on non-renewable production which generated
> pollution. That dependency produced a crisis with blackouts damaging the
> whole economy including families lacking electricity at home. "Those are the
> conditions we encountered when we took office in January 2007. Nicaragua was
> in the dark," he said.
>
> Topic 4: Sandinista doctors improve health care in the countryside
>
> The Denis Silva Torrez Sandinista Doctors Brigade, which includes 150
> doctors, nurses, laboratory technicians and support personnel from the
> Manolo Morales hospital in Managua, spends its weekends meeting the medical
> needs of the rural population. Other hospitals also have organized medical
> brigades; a "white army" arising from the Sandinista conviction of community
> service which spends its weekends in isolated communities around the country.
>
> In 2009 the Denis Silva Torres brigade has completed 12 tours in rural
> municipalities where they carried out between 600-1,000 surgeries, 12,000
> consultations, 10,000 laboratory tests, and filled 25,000 prescriptions.
> Their efforts were part of the commitment by the Sandinista government to
> return rights to the poor, especially the right to free and quality
> healthcare. They have traveled this year to Waslala, Siuna, Rio San Juan,
> Ocotal, Jalapa, Nueva Guinea, and many small villages, dispensing free health
> care.
>
> Dr. Ariel Herrera, coordinator of the brigade and director of Manolo Morales
> Peralta hospital, said that now the people are in better health after the two
> and a half years that the brigade has been providing services. They have
> conducted 20,000 consultations and done 3,000 operations with modern
> technologies such as laparoscopic surgeries which allow the patient to
> recuperate faster. "It has been hard work in the distant municipalities where
> the demand for healthcare is great due to the abandonment of the population
> by the neoliberal governments. Now the patients don't have to pay to receive
> medical attention nor travel long distances to resolve their health
> problems," Herrera said.
>
> Topic 5: Nicaraguan officials attend ALBA and Climate Summits
>
> At the Summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America
> (ALBA) President Daniel Ortega urged the member countries to withdraw from
> the Organization of American States (OAS) because within that organization
> there is "one country that conspires to maintain it hegemony and domination
> over the other countries" in a clear reference to the United States. At the
> summit it was announced that the member countries will advance with joint
> projects and "grand-national" [as opposed to transnational] companies, hold a
> tourism fair in 2010, and launch a new currency, the Sucre, in January. The
> countries condemned the agreement signed between the United States and
> Colombia giving the U.S. the right to use seven Colombian military bases. The
> ALBA nations reserved their strongest condemnation for the coup that
> overthrew President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras and for the United States for
> its support of the coup.
>
> Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Samuel Santos was in Copenhagen for the
> International Climate Change Summit where he said that Nicaragua would join
> the other developing countries members of the G77 in their demands that the
> rich countries carry the burden in the fight against climate change. The
> Central American countries announced that they would take a common position
> to the meeting demanding commitments from the developed countries on
> financing and technology transfer in order to mitigate the impact of climate
> change.
>
> Topic 6: Nicaraguan armed forces carry out operations against drug
> traffickers on Atlantic Coast
>
> Residents of the village of Walpasiksa in the North Atlantic Autonomous
> Region (RAAN) ambushed a naval patrol on Dec. 8 killing two senior officers
> and wounding five sailors. The naval patrol boats had come to investigate
> reports that a Colombian airplane carrying a ton of cocaine had crashed in
> the area the week before. On Dec. 10 military and police returned to the
> area, arrested 17 people and impounded US$177, 960. Rumors flew that there
> were millions more in the hands of traffickers who fled from the authorities.
>
> The Army believes that at least four indigenous communities are collaborating
> with Colombian traffickers and Nicaraguan criminals. He said that this was
> the first time foreign traffickers had provided locals with arms for them to
> use against Nicaraguan authorities. Police raided and took possession of four
> Managua properties of a Colombian citizen known in Nicaragua as Alberto Ruiz
> Cano who authorities accused of being the leader behind the Dec. 8 ambush.
>
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