Two striking miners from the Huanuni mine in Bolivia were killed on 5 August when police intervened to break up a road block on the highway between Oruro and La Paz. Police had arrived at the scene around 12:00am with the aim of persuading the miners to lift a roadblock in place since the previous morning, state news agency ABI reported, adding that after several hours of dialogue “the miners’ attitude became a risk for the nearly 400 vehicles stuck due to the blockade.”
Some 4,000 workers at Huanuni went on strike on 31 July in support of Bolivia’s largest labor federation, the Bolivian Workers Central (COB) in its campaign for higher pension benefits and lowering the retirement age to 55. The leftist government of President Evo Morales has presented a pensions reform initiative to Congress, but the COB says the bill is not generous enough and has called it “pro-business”.
The mine produced 821 tonnes of tin-in-concentrate in June, according to a company official quoted by Reuters. In the first half of the year Huanuni reported a profit of US$29 million on sales of 3,914 tonnes.
