In flagrante: 11 people were captured in Santander for illegal mining

Thanks to citizen complaints, the Police captured 11 people who were carrying out illegal mining work north of the city of Bucaramanga, putting neighborhoods in the area at risk, two of them of foreign nationality.

According to figures, between 2019 and 2021, 9,235 illegal mines were seized, 3,300 people were captured and 450 dredges destroyed, operated or disabled, which are machines used to extract material containing gold whose unit value is estimated at US $275,000, according to the police.

The Regional Autonomous Corporation for the Defense of the Bucaramanga Plateau (CDMB), which is the environmental authority, was present at the operation and will investigate whether there was any use of heavy metals such as mercury in the illegal extraction carried out by these people.

This procedure will be carried out to determine if there are possible future effects on the inhabitants of the La Joya, Nariño and Girardot neighborhoods, in the northwestern part of the city.

The rise in gold prices, which led it to trade at historic levels due to its status as a safe haven in times of pandemic, led to the exploitation of more hectares of land in search of gold metal in Colombia.

According to the Deputy Minister of Mines, Sandra Sandoval, more than 6,000 miners have been brought to law in Colombia so far as the Government is going to law, which is a milestone.

In February, ten people were also captured at the “Chimitá” site on 45th Street in Bucaramanga, for the extraction of gold material, stone and bolus, so the environmental authority has called for miners to act in accordance with the law and avoid penalties for environmental crimes.

From the axis of legality and considering the efforts made under the different mechanisms established by mining regulations with a view to promoting legal operations, Minenergy works on the adoption and regulation of instruments that address the various barriers to access, especially in mining-environmental matters, incorporating a differential approach for small miners with a vocation to work within the framework of legality and generation of mechanisms that facilitate traceability in the mineral production chain.

The objective is to ensure that these legal mining operations reach levels of growth and competitiveness, work is being done to structure a new mining promotion model that proposes and develops initiatives that contribute to promoting entrepreneurship, identifying public and private roles and the regulatory, institutional and operational frameworks for each of them, as well as to support miners in their path to meeting stringent technical, environmental and social standards.

KEEP READING: