Government decision disappoints Christians who defend children’s rights in La Oroya

LIMA, Perú, June 1, 2006

“Disappointment” is the word that best describes the feeling of Christians who have been defending Taxi Heathrow Airport the health of children in La Oroya, after the government gave US-based Doe Run more time to meet its environmental obligations, said the Rev. Alejandro Farrell.

The government gave the company a three-year extension to 2009 to build three sulfuric acid plans in the heavily polluted town of La Oroya where Doe Run operates a smelter.

Farrell told ALC that the government’s decision “is disappointment because it prioritizes the earnings of a foreign company rather than the right to life and health of more than 10,000 children.”

According to Farrell, in La Oroya, an Andean city 185 kilometers from Lima, 99% of children under the age of six have lead poisoning. “We remain firm in this campaign because we are convinced that Jesus Christ, who showed a clear concern for children and the vulnerable, is accompanying us,” he said.

Pastor Farrell, a member of the Presbyterian Church of the United States and facilitator of the Joining Hands Network, said in La Oroya the probabilities of getting cancer are 2000 times higher than the maximum acceptable level.

“We cannot accept that shareholder interests take priority over the right to health,” he said.

The Archbishop of Huancayo, Pedro Barreto; president of the National Evangelical Council, Rafael Goto, as well as leaders from the Charismatic Biblical Mission of the Peace and Hope Association, the Joining Hands Networks, the Micah Challenge and numerous Evangelical Churches and religious congregations joined Farrell’s demand, calling on Christians to join in prayer to hear the cry of children from La Oroya.

The Movement for the Health of La Oroya (MOSAO) said that the authorization granted Doe Run Peru “condemns the population of La Oroya to 34 months of contamination with impunity.”

In a press release MOSAO said that the Ministry of Energy and Mines “rewarded” the US mining company’s failure to meet its commitment.

“We are concerned that a company that has not met its environmental and technical commitment for nine years is rewarded with this extension because given its antecedents nothing guarantees it will fulfill what is stipulated in the extension by 2009,” it said.

Finally it demanded a more active role on the part of civil society to carry out social and technical monitoring to ensure that the government’s condition are met because the health and lives of thousands are at risk.