Rescuers were deployed Monday in a battle with time to rescue 11 workers stranded for three days after flooding an illegal gold mine in Neira, northwestern Colombia.
«We still have 11 people missing (…) hopefully in less than 48 hours“They will have been rescued,” Luis Velasquez, the governor of Caldas, where Neira is, told the press.
The gold miners were blocked in a 17-meter-deep gallery, which flooded on Friday, after heavy rains. According to the National Agency for Mines and Mines (ANM), rescue teams use pumps to remove water.
«We have problems, communication is very difficult, access to the point as well“, Acknowledged the Minister of Mines, Mines and Energy, Diego Mesa, clarifying that this gold mine was operating” without a license “.
Accidents of this kind are common in Colombia, where revenues from the illegal mining of precious metals, especially gold, now exceed those from drug trafficking, according to prosecutors.
Various armed organizations in the country, which has been plagued for the last sixty years by an extremely complex civil war, are funded primarily by these two activities.
Since the beginning of the year, 33 people have already lost their lives in press accidents, according to ANM. In 2020, the death toll from such incidents rose to 171 dead, in 2019 to 82.
Legally mined minerals are, along with oil, the main export resources of Colombia, Latin America’s 4th largest economy.
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