:quality(85)//cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/infobae/Y5WYMYE3DVBXNFHWFBD4VFGZM4.jpeg "The Ministry of Labor has set a date to resume rescue work in Pasta de Conchos 1")
On the afternoon of March 9, the Mexican government announced the date for resuming the rescue of the bodies of miners trapped in Pasta de Conchos, Coahuila in 2006. This was after relatives of the victims accused the Federal Commission Electricity (CFE) did not have the means to continue the work.
In this context, Luisa María Alcalde, Secretary of Labor and Social Welfare; Manuel Bartlett, head of the CFE and Laura Velázquez, national coordinator of civil protection met with the families of the community of Nueva Rosita.
During the meeting, the mayor expressed the federal government’s desire to “make up for lost time” and move forward with the recovery of the miners’ remains.
“We come on the instructions of the president, we call on the community to participate in making the rescue of trapped miners a reality. We want to make up for lost time and make the rescue a reality.”
It will be April 14 that work in the lights will resume and on May 1 the construction of the tunnels, indicated the CFE and the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare (STPS) in a joint press release published on Thursday March 9.
CFE will meet fortnightly with relatives of the victims of the Pasta de Conchos collapse to report on the status of the rescue.
“The Federal Electricity Commission will hold bi-weekly meetings with the bereaved to keep them informed of the progress and in parallel, a technical table with professionals recognized by the community will be constituted”, indicated the STPS and the CFE in their positioning.
The announcement after the family organization Pasta de Conchos denounced on social networks on February 28 that the inclined and Lumbrera 1 or vertical planes of the mine were under water.
“The slopes are flooded because the CFE says they don’t even have the money to hire pumps to drain it,” they said.
The group reaffirmed its accusation on March 8 when the STPS and the CFE extended the invitation to the press conference at the Hotel Rosa de Oro held this Thursday to present the progress of the Global Plan redress and justice for Pasta de Conchos.
“There is no progress or in the drainage of the work they have done, so we do not know what progress they will announce,” they condemned.
On February 19, 2006, an explosion caused by the accumulation of methane gas in mine 8 of the Pasta de Conchos unit claimed the lives of 65 workers and injured 11 others. The latter managed to get out, albeit with first and second degree burns, while the others were trapped.
From the beginning, it appeared that the working conditions were not optimal, which was admitted by recommendation 26/2006 issued by the National Commission for Human Rights (CNDH), in which it was stated that “The officials of the Labor and Social Welfare Secretariat tolerated that the aforementioned company operated in conditions that did not fully guarantee the health and life of the workers.
The salvage of the bodies was initially carried out by Grupo México, the company that owns the mine. In 2007 work was suspended despite the fact that only the remains of Felipe de Jesús Torres Reyna and Manuel Peña Saucedo had been recovered.
After an intense struggle, the relatives of the minors succeeded in having the case admitted before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which published a report in 2018 (No. 12/18 Petition 178-10) in which she acknowledged that even at that time, the causes of the explosion had not been determined nor the alleged responsibility of the officials clarified, in addition to designating the State as responsible for promoting the clarification of the fact.
In 2020, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador signed the Commitment Law for Full Rescue.