The DC senator, Ximena Rincón, called on the government to make urgent the bill that regulates the gas market, after introducing an indication that increases the penalties for theft or theft of gas cylinders, in a context in which there have been increased these crimes due to rising prices, and months of the arrival of winter.
“We want to ask the government to give urgency to the bill that I entered, in which this type of criminal activity is sanctioned and penalized more harshly. It is urgent to understand that if we want to build a different country, these things cannot be allowed” , he emphasized.
As detailed by the head of the bench of the DC senators, the initiative entered applies minor imprisonment in its medium to maximum degree to those who damage the cylinders, steal or steal them, or cause damage to the place where they are stored.
“Currently, due to price increases, gas cylinders are essential in the family economy and a prize for their commercial value. A situation that criminals have taken advantage of, exponentially increasing robberies of gas distributors, delivery men and houses. And clearly the citizens are scared,” added Rincón.
The senator emphasized that there are testimonies of distributors who have been harmed and threatened, also recalling that “bulk gas distributors are often small and medium-sized family businesses that, in addition to providing a service to the community where they are inserted, they do not have the necessary support and are even forced by the companies from which they distribute the cylinders, having strictly regulated contracts and not being able to distribute cylinders from other companies, with the concentration of competition and damage to end customers that this implies”.
The parliamentarian pointed out that it was preferred to include this issue in a project already presented, which seeks to increase competition in the gas market, instead of creating a new one, in order to reform the entire system, to avoid dispersions.
