VHeadline Venezuela News reports: Writing in today's (Monday) issue of local newspaper El Diario de Guayana, Isidro Casanova reports that Basic Industries & Mines (Mibam) Minister Rodolfo Sanz has announced the incorporation of Venezuela's first "socialist" gold mining company and that it will be a model for future economic organization in southeastern Bolivar State where community representatives from small mining towns say they have felt optimistic about Sanz' statements that he will being an end to the mining industry's state of endemic crisis.

Sanz says the new model of economic organization emphasizes the integration of diverse factors with a decisive social and socialist orientation. By assuming the assets and rights of USA-Idaho-based Hecla;s dominance over the La Camorra El Dorado Chile and El Callao gold mines, Venezuela is entering a 50-50 joint venture with the Russian Agapov Group through the National Mining Company. He adds that from the moment he took office as Minister of Basic Industries & Mines he has been intend on resolving the multiple problems in Venezuelan mining, especially the difficulties encountered by small-scale mining cooperatives.

Minera del Sur (Southern Miners) union representatives Paul Zambrano, Antonio Rivas and Dallys Figueroa say it is interesting that Sanz is personally involved with existing problems at each of the sites. "The important thing is that Sanz knows the problems of small-scale mining from the ground up, and that gives us the right to think that he has to realize the contradictions between public policy and reality in the area ... especially since the Environment Minister of Environment (MinAmb) has decided that environmental laws are above all other considerations with regard to mining in the Imataca Forest Reserve ... she hasn't even visited the area or seen the realities here in the southern municipalities, especially in El Dorado, Las Claritas, Kilometer 88 and neighboring areas which have traditionally lived from mining. Las Claritas and Kilometer 88 were born in mining. But first, before making any such decision the (MinAmb) Minister must tell us what to do with people whose livelihood is almost exclusively gold mining ... we believe that the Sanz has been acutely aware of the problems and, even if the environmental is not within his portfolio of reference, he can come up with ways to overcome the new crisis created by the Ministry of the Environment."

Zambrano and Rivas consider that both the Environment Ministry and Mibam should take decisions jointly ... especially regarding the Las Cristinas and Brisas del Cuyuni projects where, if they take into account environmental forecasts made in the proposals delivered by the foreign mining companies, they can develop these projects with a strong commitment to ensuring environment protection. It should also be noted also that the La Camorra mine (the subject of the first socialist enterprise) is also in Imataca Forest Reserve and that they have the industrial machinery at their disposal to rescue the environment, the same can be said for all the other companies involved.

"We must repeat what we've been saying for a long time i.e. that, for example, once they receive their final permits, the Las Cristinas and Brisas del Cuyuni projects in Las Claritas will do nothing to worsen the environment since they are already affected. If the Minister of the Environment had taken the trouble to visit the area and investigate the way of life of the local people in Las Claritas and Kilometer 88, she would have found that they know nothing else but mining for gold. When the minister (MinAmb) argues that gold mining in the Imataca must not affect the ecology, she must realize that the areas occupied by the two major projects -- Las Cristinas and Las Brisas del Cuyuni -- were already affected more than 30 years ago."

"The start-up of these two projects, will have no affect on anything but they will provide for the preservation and rescue of the environment. Her decision was taken from behind a desk in an office without regard for reality. We must therefore ask the Environment Minister, what will the 10,000 inhabitants of San Isidro parish and 20,000 in El Dorado do ... that's where the major gold deposits are. We are three communities were founded in the heat of gold."

Engineer Jose Manuel Rodriguez has acted as a facilitator in the area of investment and development with the technicians and executives from the Russian Agapov Group which has assumed its social role by taking on (Hecla's) labor and environmental liabilities. In this regard, the small-scale miners remain the same while at the La Camorra mine in El Dorado, in Las Claritas and at Kilometer 88 there has been a "harmonization" of policies because, essentially, they are working under identical conditions.

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