Page Seven Digital
As if they were boxers, with their fists raised and surrounded by their companions, two drivers from different groups clashed due to a conflict over spaces in the new bus terminal in the city of El Alto. The video of the incident went viral on social media.
The cooperative drivers, who work on the route to Oruro, accuse the transport union leader Víctor Tarqui of “lotting out” the spaces of the new terminal. In his opinion, they are being “overwhelmed” by the interprovincial transport that travels to Patacamaya.
“These sectors have been assigned to us in this new terminal as interdepartmental, but the interprovincial ones, who operate La Paz-Patacamaya, come to overwhelm us. As interprovincial they are the ones who have begun to overwhelm us, even auctioning off tickets, in this way there have been conflicts, there have been fights, there have been injuries, to the extent that our compañeras have been beaten,” one of the cooperative drivers told the Wara portal News.
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They indicated that at least four of their members and a woman were injured in the confrontation this Friday and showed a stone completely stained with blood.
“The Andean Federation at the head of (Víctor) Tarqui, he has sold the terminal to the interprovincials. This terminal is a work of the city of El Alto, not of the Andean Federation”, stressed the driver of the Cooperativa 3 de Mayo, Marco Antonio Calle.
In turn, the president of the transport committee of the Federation of Transport Cooperatives of La Paz, Ramiro Choque Poma, requested the intervention in the conflict of the Authority for the Regulation and Control of Telecommunications and Transport (ATT) and the mayor of El Stop, Eva Cup.
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“I don’t know who regularizes them, we are regularized by the Vice Ministry of Transportation, we are regulated by the Afcoop (Authority for Supervision and Control of Cooperatives) we have a law, the 356 of cooperatives and the Transportation Law. I don’t know who gave them power, let them come to regulate the interprovincial surubís, please, gentlemen of ATT and sister Eva Copa”, he expressed.
In this regard, the unionized transport leader Víctor Tarqui rejected the accusations against him and asked that the spaces in the new terminal be distributed “equally”.
“Without fighting among ourselves, we will make an equitable distribution so that there is no problem (…). It is for everyone (the terminal), the one who speaks must be someone who does not correspond to the Federated sector; they can talk about any situation, we are not going to go to accusations, to absolutely nothing. We are coordinating with the Mayor’s Office to solve. If this environment has been achieved, it is so that there is comfort for the sectors we are talking about, both interdepartmental and provincial,” Tarqui said.
