The Ministry of Commerce and Industries (Mici) revealed the design of a plan for the “orderly and definitive” closure of the deposit in which Cobre Panamá was extracting the mineral, whose contract was declared unconstitutional on November 28 by the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ).
The entity clarified in a statement that the administration of President Laurentino Cortizo complied with its obligations under international and national law, added newspaper La Estrella de Panamá.
The Government is prepared to defend the interests of the population and to do so “coordinates the defense of the State in conjunction with the Investment Arbitration Office of the Ministry of Economy, Finance and the Public Ministry,” the text states.
The Mici statement recalls that on December 5 it sent an order to Cobre Panamá to end the extraction, processing, transportation, export and marketing operations at the Donoso mine.
The Minister of Commerce and Industries, Jorge Rivera Staff, convened the first inter-institutional meeting on December 6 to evaluate the steps for the definitive and orderly closure of the mine, which was attended by the Ministries of Environment, Labor and Labor Development and Security.
The events escalated due to the 43-day wave of demonstrations that began on October 20, which alleged environmental damage to the region due to mining exploitation and violations of national sovereignty endorsed by Law 406 of 2023, which allowed Minera Panamá to extend for 20 years the exploitation of the copper mine exploited in Colón and considered the largest in Central America.
The Ministry of Labor assured on December 8 that it will ensure the rights of the four thousand employees whose dismissal Minera Panamá requested from the Government, “for justified economic reasons.”
The decision of the mining entity regarding these employees after the official order to the company to suspend its operations will be applied in parallel to the voluntary retirement of other workers of the entity and, in both cases, the payments will be equal, including “the money that legally owed to them,” the statement states.
The official closure of Minera Panamá’s extraction, processing, benefit, transportation, marketing and export operations followed the ruling on November 28 by the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) on the unconstitutionality of Law 406, which supported the contract between the State and the company.
The media observed with skepticism the time that the state response could take, given statements by the company that “the only difference” between both groups of unemployed is that the administrative process before the Ministry of Labor could extend for two months, for which the disbursement would take that long.
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