People affected by Belo Monte pressure Norte Energia which now accepts to register more families

The social-economic registration is the first step to be recognized as affected by Norte Energia, but the company has excluded many families of this right.

After much public pressure, Norte Energia admitted to reopen registration of people affected by Belo Monte in the city of Altamira. According to the manager of urban relocation of the company, Amauri Daros, the company last Friday started the registration of what he called from “new occupations”, people who had never been registered.

The registration is the first step for the guarantee of rights, because it means that the family is recognized as affected. This is an important achievement for the organization and struggle of thea ffected people, who have been denouncing the company for not recognizing the right of many families who live in the area where the dam lake is predicted to be.

Through the organization of the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB), a process of struggle for rights has been carried out, including occupying an urban resettlement, blocking the highways of access to the dam construction site, protests and many meetings since the beginning of this year. Even though the company has being denying to consider new registrations, affirming that negotiations with those already registered is the priority.

Until now, 7790 families from the urban area of Altamira have been registered, of which only 3980 will have the right to a house in the new allotments, the other will receive financial compensations, which keep getting lower. The MAB calculates that more than 10.7 thousand people are not registered.

Reasons to continue struggling

“The reopening of registrations is an important step, but by itself it does not guarantee what we consider fair : the right for resettlement for all those affected”, said Carla de Oliveira, affected by Belo Monte and activist of MAB.

For the MAB, it is necessary to guarantee registration of the families from the older occupation areas, such as the neighbourhoods of Boa Esperança and Invasão dos Padres. To guarantee that everyone has the right to a house in the resettlement and not only crumbs of compensations, besides guaranteeing the agility of all those who have the right to a house in the resettlement, because the rain season is already coming and the Xingu river is already rising.

It is still necessary to struggle to guarantee the quality of the urban resettlement, with only 1/4 of the houses already delivered, these houses are already presenting many problems, such as infiltration, cleavages, precarious lighting, no public facilities and even explosion of cesspools have occurred.

The declaration of Norte Energia to register more families happened in a meeting with the MAB, last Friday (November 7^th) in the House of Government in Altamira.ra (7 de novembro) na Casa de Governo (ligada ao Governo Federal) em Altamira.