Archive for the ‘Natural Disasters’ Category
Monday, February 11th, 2008
The National Institute for Civil Defense, Indeci, has provided more than 108 tons of goods to help some 45,000 people in Peru as torrential rains continue to cause havoc throughout the country.
About half way through the rainy season, the storms have caused floods and landslides, or “huaycos” as they are known in Peru, that have blocked highways and left thousands of people temporarily isolated in the country’s Andes and jungle regions.
The head of Indeci, Luis Palomino, said almost all departments have been affected. “The only departments that did not have major problems in January are Piura, Lambayeque, La Libertad, Ancash and Lima. But almost the entire country has suffered consequences from the rains, floods and overflow,” daily La República quoted Palomino saying. (more…)
Posted in Environment, Natural Disasters | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
Flooding in the eastern province of Padre Abad, in Ucayali Department, has affected 1,500 homes and some 7,500 people after three days of heavy rains caused the overflow of the Aguaytía River.
Ucayali’s civil defense director, Federico Pezo, told daily El Comercio most of the damage is in the Miguel Grau and Barrio Unido districts located about 800 kilometers east of Lima. “The last time we suffered similar damage was seven-years-ago, but this time it seems like the situation is even worse,” said Pezo. (more…)
Posted in Environment, Natural Disasters | No Comments »
Saturday, January 19th, 2008
Heavy rains are causing widespread damage to ancient ruins in Peru’s normally arid northern coast, says a regional director from the National Institute of Culture, INC.
Enrique Sánchez, the INC chief in La Libertad department, told Enlace Nacional the rains are damaging the adobe walls in the Chan Chan site, the largest city in pre-Columbian America and the capital of the Chimu Kingdom, which reached its peak in the 15th century before being conquered by the Inca Empire.
About 300 miles northwest of Lima, Chan Chan was a 28-square-mile city that was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage Site in 1986. UNESCO described it as “an absolute masterpiece in terms of town planning,” and “a unique testimony to the ancient Chimu Kingdom.”
However, the same year the site was also added to UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger due to its exposure to natural erosion from wind and rain.
“Naturally, we always have conservation work,” said Sánchez “but it rains and that produces drips and the drips break the walls, they break the frieze murals… it’s uncontrollable.”
Sánchez added that workers are covering Chan Chan structures with plastic tarps in order to protect it from the rain. “Plastic tarps are put on the monument so they won’t be affected too much, and the next day we take them off.” (more…)
Posted in Archaeology, Environment, Natural Disasters | No Comments »
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 »
