Claudio Andrade
05/10/2021 18:09
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 05/10/2021 18:09
A
new picket line now
cuts Route
40
between El Foyel and El Bolsón, in Río Negro, leaving some 20 Chilean and Argentine trucks stranded.
Last Thursday, the Neuquén Self-convened Health Workers lifted the last blockade on Route 40 in the Villa La Angostura sector.
Near the Cardenal Samoré pass, more than 100 trucks prevented from continuing their journey had gathered.
In the Rio Negro mountain range, those who are demanding now are the so-called
Homeless Neighbors
who demand from the mayor of El Bolsón, Bruno Pogliano,
urgent help
to raise their houses that were burned in the fires of last March.
His picket started last Friday.
Some of the trucks have been
idle for 72 hours
.
The drivers, as happened in La Angostura, do not have access to bathrooms nor can they go to shops to buy food.
The Chileans are heading to Punta Arenas with perishable goods, the trans-Andeans indicated.
The drivers denounced that some of the protesters were intoxicated and
wanted to take the cattle from a truck
.
Drivers intervened in large numbers and stopped the robbery.
However, other picketers also tried to
remove merchandise
from the transport, so they broke the Customs seals essential to enter Chile again.
These stamps guarantee that the merchandise remained intact during the journey abroad.
Among those who star in the pickets there are also militants against mega-mining, it transpired.
In Chubut these days the possibility of authorizing mining on its soils is being debated.
On Thursday the provincial Legislature rejected a popular initiative with 30,000 signatures to stop the project.
However, most of the protagonists of the blockades are
residents of plot 26
in Las Golondrinas where the fire consumed more than 300 houses.
The Homeless Neighbors claim that for two months they have not had water or electricity in the sector.
Over the weekend they warned Mayor Pogliano that they were going to
take over the local municipality
if it did not solve their problems,
a business source from E Bolsón
told
Clarín
.
"What corresponds is that the States guarantee the international free transit treaties, and specifically the country-country agreements that maintain safe routes for Argentine and Chilean carriers," said Juan Araya, president of the Association of Truck Owners in Punta Arenas ( Asoducam) to Río Negro.
“These treaties guarantee the safety of all and therefore, it is unacceptable that drivers who are outside their borders are subjected to pressing conditions, with cut routes, precarious food and hygiene and difficult weather situations.
This situation occurs in the midst of a pandemic, thereby endangering the health of drivers and crew, something that violates basic human rights recognized by the UN, "he added.
On April 29, a counter picket was raised, initiated by Chilean drivers in Tierra del Fuego a week earlier, in response to the blockades in La Angostura.
About 1,000 Argentine transports had been stranded in Punta Delgada.
The trans-Andean drivers held a meeting with ambassadors Rafael Bielsa and Nicolás Monckeberg Díaz who assured them that they will update the agreement on free transit of transport dating from 1974.
DD
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