TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2009

Nicaragua Network Hotline (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.

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@afgj.org.
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