The Bishop of San Juan, Monsignor Tomás Alejo Concepción, and 19 priests from the provinces of Azua, San Juan and Elías Piña warned President Luis Abinader about “the dire consequences for the health and life of this area of the country”to carry out the mining exploitation in the El Romero Project, by the Canadian company Goldquest, opposing, in effect, that the president authorize this claim.
“We want to make a timely call to His Excellency Mr. President Luis Rodolfo Abinader Corona, of to refrain from granting the mining exploitation permit for El Romero, whose interest is in the gold-hungry bowels of the GoldQuest Mining Company, at the cost of the life and health of a region”, warn the Catholic parish priests in a document.
This position of the Catholic authorities was read by the priest Santo Cabral Luciano, from the Espíritu Santo parish, in the El Córbano neighborhood, and the document is also signed by Fathers Bernardo Peralta Florián, Carlos Peralta Florián, Sandro Jiménez, Jeisis Pérez, Moisés Corcino Valenzuela, and Father Manuel Segura.
Also signing the manifesto are the priests Salvador Amauri Beltré; José de los Santos Castillo, Javier Guativa, Francisco Javier de la Rosa, parish priest San Pedro Apóstol, El Cercado; José Antonio Álamo, parish priest of Our Lady of La Altagracia, of Juan de Herrera, and Father Pedro Mateo Valdez, of Divine Mercy, in San Juan.
Likewise, the parents Mártires Gracia D´Oleo, Gabriel Delgado, Ramón Emilio del Rosario Adames, Feliciano Méndez Gerónimo, Fresnel Ancina and Melanio Colas González stamp the document against the Goldquest mining company.
The religious point out that the Constitution orders the public powers to protect the upper river basins and biodiversityand that its article 15 establishes that “water constitutes a national and strategic patrimony for public use, inalienable, imprescriptible, unseizable and essential for life.
Human consumption has priority over any other use. The State will promote the elaboration and implementation of effective policies for the protection of the Nation’s water resources”.