The governor of Córdoba, Erasmo Zuleta Bechara, responded to emergency calls from several municipalities in the department, including Ayapel, Montelíbano, Tierralta and La Apartada, affected by the heavy rains of the last few hours.
Zuleta Bechara insisted on the need for coordinated action between territorial governments and the national government to mitigate the damage.
“We have been responding to calls from the different municipalities of Ayapel, Montelíbano, Tierralta and La Apartada since early in the morning. There are several municipalities in the department of Córdoba that, due to the heavy rains yesterday, are again in emergency status today. As we have been saying, the department of Córdoba and many regions of the national territory have to act in the midst of the emergency,” declared the governor.
Zuleta Bechara highlighted the efforts of the departmental government to address the crisis, highlighting the coordination with the Corporation of the Sinú and San Jorge Valleys (CVS) to prevent and address the situation.
“We are working together to deploy all our capabilities to care for the affected people with food and kitchen kits. We are addressing the problem today in the midst of the emergency, and the call is to the national government because I have always said, every year it is the same story. Every year we celebrate the arrival of a tank car, which is synonymous with poverty and backwardness. Those are things from the last century. “Either we organize ourselves around water or we will continue to experience these calamities, not only in Córdoba but throughout the Colombian Caribbean and much of the national territory,” he said.
The governor also called for joint action to structurally solve the problems affecting the region. “That is why I have said it, the Colombian Caribbean has always been the region least loved by the government, not just this government, it is an issue that has been going on for decades. Either we address the structural problems of the regions or we will continue in these conditions of backwardness and poverty that have engulfed our territory. Here the call is to see, today we are in the middle of the emergency. The idea is that for the next few years we will begin working groups to define who does what, how much needs to be contributed and what the national government provides to allow us a structural solution. But this is already overdiagnosed, it is already much talked about, and what we need is for people to say what the national government says and what we say from the department’s governorship. Here we are willing to provide the necessary resources to be able to structurally solve this problem,” Zuleta Bechara stressed.
Regarding the issue of bridge collapses in Ayapel, he pointed out that there are now two more bridges missing that connect the five towns in the lower area of Ayapel, on the border with Sucre and the urban capital. “We are already carrying out the survey, this is a work that exceeds 150,000 million pesos and I return and insist: from the Government of the department we are willing to make all the efforts, but we cannot alone. The municipality of Ayapel also does not have the financial or technical capabilities to be able to carry out these great works of great impact and magnitude,” he concluded.
