[fsf60k] Fwd: Nicaragua Network Hotline--December 15, 2009

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
> 
> You are receiving this email from Nicaragua Network because you are 
> subscribed to the Hotline list. To ensure that you continue to receive emails 
> from us, add nicanet@xxxxxxxx to your address book today. NOTICE: If you want 
> to forward this message, use the forward function at the bottom of the 
> e-mail. Do not use your own message forward function. If you do, one of your 
> recipients could unsubscribe you.
>  
> You may unsubscribe if you no longer wish to receive our emails.
> 
> 
> 
>   
>   Nicaragua Network Hotline   
> 
> 
>   
> www.nicanet.org
>   
> 
> 
>    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. 
> 
> This hotline is prepared from the Nicaragua News Service and other sources. 
> To receive a more extensive weekly summary of the news from Nicaragua by 
> e-mail or postal service, send a check for $60.00 to Nicaragua Network, 1247 
> E St., SE, Washington, DC 20003. We can be reached by phone at 202-544-9355. 
> Our web site is: www.nicanet.org. To subscribe to the Hotline, send an e-mail 
> to nicanet@xxxxxxxxx
> 
> Alliance for Global Justice (of which the Nicaragua Network is a member 
> project) has for the second year in a row received a 4-star rating from 
> Charity Navigator, America's largest independent evaluator of charities. To 
> read more, click here.
> 
> To support our work by making a tax deductible donation to the Nicaragua 
> Network, go here.
> 
> 
>   
> 
> 
> 
> Forward email
> 
> 
> This email was sent to ikecip@xxxxxxx by nicanet@xxxxxxxxx
> Update Profile/Email Address | Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe™ | 
> Privacy Policy.
> Email Marketing by
> 
> 
> Nicaragua Network | 1247 E St. SE | Washington | DC | 20003
>

Other related posts: