Lima, Jul 9 (Prensa Latina) A large police contingent today forced the withdrawal of hundreds of informal miners camped in front of the Legislative Palace to demand a law to replace the government decree that bans 50,000 of them.

At the same time, the protest continues with at least six blockades in the southern regions of Ica, Arequipa and Cusco and the northern region of La Libertad, and the leaders of the movement called to intensify the road closures.

According to the official report, there was no violence in the operation to remove the miners who remained there waiting for their request to be attended to and for the first step to be taken, the initial parliamentary approval in the Energy and Mines Congressional Commission.

The legislative working group, however, last night rejected a bill by leftist legislators that proposed to replace the law approved years ago for the formalization of the miners, which was achieved only by a small minority.

The opposition bill proposed to extend once again until the end of 2026 the deadline for formalization, which according to the recent decree will end at the end of the year, and to modify the procedures to make them more viable.

The complexity of the issue includes armed crime in illegal mining areas in the Amazonian region of Madre de Dios and the Andean region of Pataz, human trafficking and the use of polluting substances in gold mining.

The social nature of the problem was pointed out by one of the blockaders on the outskirts of the southern town of Ocoña, arguing that expelling from the activity 50 thousand people prevented from formalizing will generate millions of unemployed people who, directly or indirectly, depend on informal mining,

The Vice Minister of Energy, Ronald Ibarra, declared that the 50 thousand excluded have not accredited their presence in the operation zones and only 31 thousand who started the formalization process will be able to work.

For opposition congressmen, such as Guido Bellido, the problem is essentially social, in addition to the fact that hundreds of thousands of hectares of mining concessions are monopolized by large companies, which only exploit 2.5 percent of these territories.

Informal and aresanal miners operate on the idle lands of these concessions, which belong to the State, which has authorized the operations of the large mining companies.

Bellido criticized the Minister of Energy and Mines, Jorge Luis Montero, for ignoring that these lands belong to the State and claiming that miners are invading the properties of formal companies.

Máximo Franco, leader of the National Confederation of Small and Artisanal Mining, stated that the Government should cancel the concession of lands not exploited by the companies and award them to informal and artisanal miners.