Unemployed Guayana gold miners' health put at risk digging up corpses to make way for local by-pass at Tucupita

VHeadline Venezuela News reports: Tucupita town council in southeastern Bolivar State is being asked to condemn the removal of corpses from a disused cemetery in violation of health & safety regulations. Councillor Euclid Sarabia said he has spoken with grave-diggers who are engaged in digging up the corpses and that four-man exhumation crews are being paid only Bs.F 200 (€uro 72) per desecrated grave.

Sarabia says the otherwise unemployed miners are being taken advantage of since they have no kind of security, much less sanitary precautions in their work and has appealing to the Ministry of Environment (MinAmb) and and the Mayor of Tucupita to take immediate action and that the municipal engineering department must take a lead to ensure that all graveyards under municipality jurisdiction are in full compliance with health and environment regulations.

The opening-up of the graves and removal of the dead is said to be part of a local plan to build a by-pass through the site. Sarabia saus that as chairman of the municipal environment committee he has had an obligation to speak with the families of some of the deceased who are "deeply concerned by the manner in which the wholesale removal of the corpses is taking place."
"Besides the individual heartbreak of each and every mourner, there is the imminent danger that the unemployed miners who were hired for the job will unnecessarily put themselves at risk and become victims of pollution or disease for the paltry sum of Bs.F 50 (€18= $23.29) per worker per corpse!"