The head of the Renovación Nacional (RN) caucus, Senator Paulina Núñez, referred to what has transpired regarding President Gabriel Boric’s visit to Antofagasta and affirmed that “the good evaluation by the citizens will depend on the fact that his announcements and plans produce, in the short, medium and long term, a decrease in delinquency and greater security to live”.
Let us remember that the head of state will travel to Antofagasta this Wednesday, October 12, in a new regional tour that would last until Friday the 14th of the same month.
Núñez recalled that in February he met with the President and raised the need for a national agreement as broad and cross-cutting as possible on migration, in addition to the delivery, in May, of a battery of legislative proposals to address the security crisis public, which contained initiatives on this matter. In this regard, he expressed that “we expected a better reception of the proposals and greater dialogue to advance an agreement on migration matters, because it is not a request of ours, but of the territories we represent, but silence grants and I remain with the feeling that there is little encouragement to reach agreements and more motivation to install an ideological agenda”.
You may also like:
However, regarding the possible announcements during the visit to Antofagasta, the RN legislator valued the entry of the bill that will allow the expulsion and more expeditious redirection to their countries of those who commit crimes and do not comply with Chilean law, stressing that ” better late than never, because the same thing they are announcing was rejected when we presented it as an indication in full discussion of the law”.
Finally, Senator Núñez pointed out that “it is everyone’s job to safeguard the security of Chileans, but when governing, decisions must be made and priorities must be made, and these issues cannot continue to wait. To govern is to decide, it is to prioritize”.
It is worth mentioning that until now there is still no clear agenda of what activities President Boric will carry out in the region, whether he will only visit Antofagasta or his visit contemplates other communes.
The Deputy for the Antofagasta Region, José Miguel Castro (RN), also a member of the Citizen Security Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, presented a legislative initiative that seeks to create “a specific criminal type for copper theft” and according to the legislative text, the objective is to “implement concrete measures that seek to stop this criminal act, which not only involves violence in things, but also violence in people who work and are somehow linked somewhere of the transport or storage chain”, he states.
Thus, the parliamentarian mentioned some of the latest cases of this type of assault in the area: “In May of this year, a group of at least 12 armed people, dressed as soldiers, intimidated and beat the crew of a railway train Antofagasta Bolivia, in order to steal the copper they were transporting”.(…)”So far this year, this company alone has suffered 15 copper thefts, which has been more than 50 tons stolen and whose appraisal exceeds 500,000 dollars,” said deputy Castro, who also said that cases like this are not exceptional.
He also recalled the violent robbery at Minera Cenizas located in the city of Taltal, last July, where guards were handcuffed and copper cathodes were stolen. “It was tremendous because the criminals would have tried to take two workers,” he said.
“Copper theft is not an isolated incident, but rather a criminal act carried out by specialized criminal gangs who know the geographical area perfectly, the route of the Antofagasta-Bolivia railway, and even the work of the mining companies themselves, and who to fulfill their purpose they intimidate, hit and even cause various injuries to whoever is in their path, since they also have high firepower,” said the legislator.
Only in the last six months have crimes related to the theft of the red metal increased by 91%, compared to 2021, and that was reported by the company Movistar, whose executives commissioned a study to find out the scope of this type of vandalism, confirming its increase year after year.
The report was conclusive: there were 725 thousand kilos of cables that have been stolen throughout the country, which has a direct impact on the connectivity of Chilean men and women, in fact there are already around 1.5 million homes that they have been without connection since 2020 as a result of the damage caused to the infrastructure, and that according to Movistar executives, are repetitive crimes.
Copper theft is not something that only affects private individuals, but affects all of Chile, since it is the country’s main export, whose value reaches US 359.72 per pound, with a projection for this year of USD 4 per pound, keeping in mind that the increase of 1 cent in its value is equivalent to a profit of 50 million pesos to the fiscal coffers. Indeed, copper mining contributed 11.5% of the country’s GDP in 2020 and during 2000 and 2019 it represented 13.1% of the country’s tax revenue.
Finally, deputy Castro highlighted the call made by the National Confederation of Truck Owners (CNDC) who requested an “urgent intervention and patrols in the north of the country” and added: “vandalizing telecommunications infrastructure is one of the new businesses of the organized crime, then – as if it were car parts – they sell the metal on the black market, reduce the species, thus evading taxes, and incidentally the companies have to invest and reinvest millions of pesos in recovering said infrastructure so as not to leave citizens are disconnected”, therefore we have to be firm as a community to seek alternatives to the advance of organized gangs and their new crimes”.
Project seeks to modify criminal code by The counter on Scribd
