Business leaders question government’s lack of authority in mining crisis

The National Council of Private Enterprise (Conep) has questioned the Government’s lack of authority to put an end to a series of events that are affecting citizen coexistence and the country’s productive sectors.

The business sector highlights that in the last 30 days in Panama, there have been constant road closures, which are affecting the daily life of citizens with the loss of medical appointments, education on pause, and a painful destruction of the Panamanian economy.

“Small, medium, and micro-enterprises have received first-hand the most accurate blows, producing an alert regarding its consequences, which range from unemployment to the deepening of informality that had already increased as a result of the pandemic.

“In the face of this, there is an absence of authority, whose persistent silence and inaction means that groups that promote chaos and anarchy define the future of everyone,” is reflected in the Conep statement.

The union wonders how long all of this will be allowed and states that the country’s patience has run out.

Panama registers its fifth week of protests and road blockades in rejection of the mining contract between the State and Canada’s First Quantum, for the exploitation of copper in Donoso, Colón.

Conep says that we must wait for the ruling of the Supreme Court on the unconstitutional claims that have been presented against the contract and that we must also have the commitment to respect it.

“Let us all seek solutions to our problems, without the ideological and political contaminants that never help to find ways of understanding. The ruin of the nation is not the way. Until when? remains the question for the authorities…”