May 4, 2016
With the presence of local and regional authorities, veedores and various actors, two agreements were signed at the Fundación Universitaria del Área Andina campus in Valledupar, one of them for reactivation of the CSIR Cesar.
Two agreements were signed last Thursday, April 28, with the presence of the president of Drummond Ltd. and the president of the Fundación Universitaria del Área Andina, Gelka Gutiérrez. The first one has the objective of strengthening and relaunching the Committee for Monitoring the Investment of Coal and Oil Royalties in the Department of Cesar (CSIR: Comité de Seguimiento a la Inversión de Regalías de Carbón y Petróleo en el Departamento del Cesar). The second agreement’s purpose is to strengthen skills in the integral management of projects in the coal producing municipalities of Cesar. Drummond Ltd. contributed thirty million and twenty million pesos, respectively towards facilitating these agreements.
The signing of the first agreement took place thanks to Drummond’s dedication and focus of strengthening good use of the royalties and social control over them in the department of Cesar, and to the leadership of the Fundación Universitaria del Área Andina and the Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic in pursuit of strengthening the committee for the monitoring of royalties in the department of Cesar. To these initiatives Drummond joins with the contribution of thirty million pesos.
The Fundación Universitaria del Área Andina will invite the departmental government of Cesar, the municipal governments of Chiriguaná, La Jagua de Ibirico, El Paso, Becerril and Codazzi, the Red de Veedurías Ciudadanas, community action boards, civil society and communication media, and also other educational institutions, such as the Universidad Popular del Cesar, UNAD, UDES and their students, to participate in this strategy of Institutional strengthening.
During execution of this initiative a technical committee and three working panels will be set up to share successful experiences. Public officials from the municipalities in the area of influence of mining will also be trained, in an eighty-hour diploma course distributed in four modules, in the integral management, formulation, structuring and presentation of projects to the General System of Royalties and Territorial Planning with citizen participation and social control, and the 2016 Action Plan will be constructed. The other twenty million pesos contributed by Drummond Ltd. in the second agreement will be invested in this training program.
For Drummond Ltd. it is a pleasure to contribute to the strengthening of valuable tools like this one that create new knowledge, identity and empowerment of local institutions and communities with regard to their patrimony.
