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Not applicable prior consultation
Not applicable to prior consultation Cañariaco exploration phase
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2013 13:02
During the first meeting of the subgroup of Mining and environment Cañaris Development Bureau, on 9 February in Ferreñafe, Carlos Chirinos, director of the Office of Environmental Affairs of the Ministry of Environment (Minam), clarified that the procedure should not prior consultation in this district for approval or not of the exploration phase of a mining project Cañariaco.
The official explained that the legal mechanism of consultation-exclusive original indigenous people-not applicable because the project Cañariaco, which is run by the Canadian company Candente Copper, is in the exploration stage and therefore involves no affectation Peasant Community San Juan de Canaris (town where the mine site).
"What makes the company (Candente Copper) to carry out exploration activities are diamond drilling where land includes part of the sub floor to see the quality of the ore, to see which is the direction of the grain. Then That implies no impairment legally the rights of the community and loss of land, "he said after rejecting the application of prior consultation.
He said that "what the company is asking permission to enter the grounds of the community to perform that activity, therefore, the communal authority has to call people to see or if permission is granted. This If this is a permission that asks a company to conduct exploration activity, is different when it comes to operating activity. Concepts have to clear them. "
He said that the Ministry of Culture (through the Vice Intercultural) is the only entity in the state that has to determine whether a community is ancestral and native or not to rule through consultation on the operational phase of a project extractive in their jurisdiction.
"When it comes to the exploitation phase where there if there is a detrimental territory and if certain conditions as they are indigenous peoples ancestral to prior consultation, that it must determine the Ministry of Culture," he said.
Ombudsman
As the Deputy Ombudsman Lambayeque, Julio Reyes Hidalgo, said the Ombudsman (e) Vega, in response to a sector of the community Canaris requested the Chair of the Council of Ministers to check whether the company Candente Copper had fulfilled obtain authorization from the superficial use of communal land for the development of the exploration phase of the project Cañariaco.
He stressed that these are two totally different issues licenses to the mining community for the use of the land surface and the other, the right to prior consultation (applicable in the operational phase) only responsibility of indigenous native peoples.
He said the Deputy Minister of Interculturalism has yet to develop a database to determine if Cañaris qualifies as originating ancestral village with the benefit of prior consultation on legislative and administrative measures that may affect them.
Another clarification
The President of the Bureau of Labor Cañaris Development and Social Management National Director of the Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM), Fernando Torres Castillo, meanwhile said that the consultation on September 30, 2012 in Canaris (which according to its organizers, the collective anti-mining district, resulted in the majority of the population did not approve the project) does not fit the framework of the Act prior consultation.
He noted that the MEM and other state institutions failed documentation, not even a standard registration or voting, based on the consultation of September last year, also recalled that on July 8, held a general assembly did pass Cañariaco exploratory phase. It is said, of an assembly and a query that will be evaluated legally, according to the existing documentation, the Development Bureau to determine valid.