April 24, 2024, 11:10 PM
April 24, 2024, 11:10 PM
Three senior officials of the National Management of Evaporite Resources (GNRE), a representative of the supplier and seven middle positions, are those investigated for irregularities in the construction of the swimming pools at the pilot plant in Llipi, Uyuni. The thesis of the three prosecutors handling the case is based on the technical reports they prepared at Yacimientos del Litio Boliviano (YLB).
EL DEBER agreed to the accusation of the prosecutors’ commission and it can be seen that the accused are: José BC, former director of operations; Víctor RP, former head of civil works; David RM, former head of civil works; Edwin UY, former plant manager; Paula GR, representative of the company Gerimex SRL; and Carlos A.Q.
Those arrested are: Luis Alberto Echazú Alvarado, former national manager of evaporite resources; Jorge FM, former construction engineer; Paul QB, former supervisory officer and Cristian BAA This Wednesday the death of Juan Carlos Montenegro, who was executive manager of the GNRE, was announced. All of them add up to 11 accused of different crimes, although the State Attorney, César Siles said that there are 12 people accused.
The report recounts the work on the project “comprehensive development of Uyuni salt flat brine-industrial plant” and describes the existence of 20 lines of industrial pools, each made up of 8 evaporation pools. In the end they observed 18 of those pools that deteriorated.
The report states that There were three purchases of Geotextiles and Geomembranes which was carried out by the company itself and hired construction companies to build the pools and waterproof them. Three purchases were made, the first from the company Filmtex SAS for an amount of Bs 98.1 million for 4 million square meters of 075 mm geomembrane; Then a second purchase from the Maccaferry company to which they paid Bs 141.6 million for 8 million square meters of 050 mm geomembrane, it was with that geomembrane that 18 swimming pools were waterproofed, although they were later re-waterproofed with the purchase of 6.9 million square meters to Maccaferry itself.
The person in charge of waterproofing the pools with that geomembrane was Gerimex SRL, whose representative is one of the accused. According to the report, in 2016 there was a test that should not have been carried out with the pools that were lined with the 050 mm membrane.
Aside from the testthe report itself indicates that the pools were subjected to re-waterproofing, but the problem was that there was no water and that is why they cracked and became unusable.
“Once delivered, they were not put into operation immediately, due to the lack of Pumping Networks and Transfer Pumps (different pumping phases) that fed the lines of the pools, which were delivered months and years after their waterproofing, with no action aimed at protecting the geosynthetics having been carried out; For this reason, exposure to solar rays constitutes an additional factor that generated non-operable pools, even more so when the first two factors were weighed in advance,” the accusation states.
