Archive for the ‘Earthquakes’ Category
Thursday, January 17th, 2008
Six months after the magnitude-8 earthquake hit southern Peru, the comptroller-general’s office will begin a probe of Ica’s regional government for alleged irregularities in reconstruction contracts, says lawmaker Freddy Cerna Guzmán.
Guzmán, a member of the Union for Peru party and a representive of the Ica congressional district, told Ideele Radio that preliminary investigations show contracts to clean the debris from the Aug. 15 earthquake were awarded to companies lacking the capacity to complete the job. He added that the companies were not entitled to receive State contracts.
“There has been over charging for machines, the Comptroller has also found poor use of public funds for the emergency on the part of Ica’s regional presidency,” says Guzmán. According to Guzmán, 20 of the contracts cost the government 15 million soles, or about $5 million, representing more than 80 percent of the emergency funds.
“I’ve presented documents to the Comptroller where it shows the irregularities in the case of machinery and over charging during the emergency,” Guzmán said.
Accusations of government mismanagement and profiteering have tarnished the reconstruction effort. “At times when people need resolute and transparent help, there are irregularities like these.”
Posted in Corruption, Earthquakes, Natural Disasters | No Comments »
Saturday, December 15th, 2007
Peru will loom slightly larger than usual in the headlines in U.S. newspapers this weekend after President George W. Bush signed into law a free trade agreement between the two nations.
The bill passed following a contentious feud in Congress that ended only after Republicans agreed to Democratic demands to include labor union protection and environmental standards, both in the Peru deal and in future trade pacts.
Bush said before signing Friday that he is hopeful the Peru deal will pave the way for approval of deals with Panama, Colombia and South Korea before he leaves office in 2009. And President Alan Garcia assured Bush that his government will make good on its pledge that the trade deal will favor Peru’s poor, particularly “the population in the Andes and their small enterprises.”
“You should be sure, as well as the members of the Congress and the American people, that in Peru this treaty would not exclude the poorest of the Peruvian workers,” Garcia said moments before Bush signed the pact. “On the contrary; using the words of the great Abraham Lincoln, it will be a free trade agreement of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
But not everyone in Peru is comforted by that assurance.
Weeks before the House approved the deal on Nov. 8 in a 285-132 vote, David Bayer, a former deputy executive officer for USAID in Lima until 2002, sent out the following appeal. He wrote it from his home in Ica, the coastal city devastated by the magnitude-8 earthquake last August (it is reprinted here with David’s permission):
What is wrong with the Peruvian-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA)?
Chapter X is the most insidious part of the US-Peru-FTA in terms of its damage to the vast majority of Peruvians. The GRADE analysis ( a conservative NGO) points out the the poor and extreme poor in Peru will get poorer with the implementation of the FTA:
Chapter X boils down to this: when the FTA is signed, everything favorable to the big private corporations and multinationals gets “frozen in time” or “shielded.” If the companies are exonerated from taxes (as is the case with the Peruvian agro-exporters) or have a special low-tax regime (as is the case with 80 percent of the major Peruvian mining companies) THEN NONE OF THESE PRIVILIGES CAN BE CHANGED by the national, regional or local government without violating Chapter X . (more…)
Posted in Business, Earthquakes, Environment, Law, Mining, Natural Disasters, Politics, Regional Politics | No Comments »
Friday, November 23rd, 2007
Residents in southern Peru began a 24-hour protest today over the State’s torpid reconstruction efforts following the magnitude-8 earthquake on August 15, 2007. According to the Office of Police Operations (Ceopol) in Ica, protestors blocked kilometer 292 and 293 of the Pan-American South highway leading into Ica.
Protestors are calling for the immediate resignation of Southern Reconstruction Fund (FORSUR) president, Julio Favre, and rapid reconstruction of city infrastructure. The reconstruction effort has been tainted by alleged government mismanagement and corruption charges. (more…)
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Thursday, October 18th, 2007
The magnitude-8 earthquake that rocked Peru’s southern coast last August has been called the earthquake of corruption, as accusations of government mismanagment and profiteering continue to shake out.
On August 20, Peru’s National Police found 76 bags stuffed with 330 pounds of donated food and clothing hoarded in the house of María Rosas García, a civil defense coordinator from La Victoria district in Lima. Shortly after, Juan Enrique Mendoza, the regional governor of quake-devasted Pisco, complained that officials from the comptroller-general’s office were unnecessarily withholding food, clothing and medicine.
Another 15 people from the Seguro Integral del Salud (SIS), a division of the Health Ministry, are currently under investigation for allegedly taking kickbacks on the purchase of overpriced food rations. Among them is Julio Espinoza Jiménez, the former head of the division.
Within two days of the earthquake, the Plamol shoe company overcharged SIS more than US$700,000 for 219,000 food rations. Local media started asking why the bid was awarded to a shoe company.
Espinoza Jiménez says Peru’s Health Minister Carlos Vallejos cleared the purchases. Vallejos denies the claim. During an interview with IPS news service, Congressman Renzo Reggiardo said “the officials who committed irregularities are mid-level. They couldn’t have acted alone, on their own. There must be people higher up who have backed these irregular activities.”
Posted in Corruption, Earthquakes | 1 Comment »
