Although the Emberá Wounaan people have the floor of the Ministry of Energy that there is no oil concession or contract signed with the Sinclair Panama Oil Corporation within the territories they inhabit, they demand an early response from the Public Registry to clarify the securities of their land.
Leonides Cunampia, chief general of the Emberá Wounaa n region, denounced that both inhabitants of that constituency and other lands they inhabit continue to have problems legalizing their properties.
The reason is that they encounter a transfer of company documents above their ancestral territories.
In this regard, Gabriel Melisama, chief of the Emberá Wounaan Collective Lands, asked the Public Registry to certify the response they received from the Ministry of Energy.
“In this way, we give peace of mind to the peoples,” Melisama said.
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Time is running out for these original peoples who warned that they could take action if they do not find a response to their requests.
“We have made it clear to him that if we do not get this answer, we will look for other mechanisms to see that response at the latest before it passes this month,” Melisama warned.
The National Coordinator of Indigenous Peoples of Panama has been demanding that the title granted to Sinclair Oil Panama be declared null and void.
There are 326 thousand hectares that were transferred without taking into account that the concecion invaded collective property of two indigenous regions and collective territories.
According to Cunampia and Melisama, the government has dilated the issue in conversations with them and has not given them a concrete answer about the legal status of this company.
This article has been translated from the original which first appeared in Pan America