Luana Lourenço and Isabela Vieira, Iolando Lourenço and Ivan Richard      Reporters Agência Brasil

Brasilia – Yesterday afternoon, the minister of National Integration, Fernando Bezerra Coelho, went before a special commission (“Comissão Representativa do Congresso Nacional”) specially convoked to hear him during the congressional recess. The commission consisted of 17 deputies and 7 senators. The commission met against a background of a ground swell of accusations against the minister, involving nepotism and favoritism in the distribution of funding for natural disaster prevention. In other words, corruption.

Although twenty members of the commission belong to political parties allied with the government (which is not interested in having a seventh minister resign because of corruption charges), the vice leader of the government in the Chamber of Deputies, Luciano Castro (PR-RR), declared that the objective of the hearing was not to “shield” (“blindar”) the minister from criticism but to hear explanations and a report on action by the ministry in dealing with natural disasters.

However, the leader of the opposition party, PSDB, Duarte Nogueira (SP) said that the minister owed the nation an explanation about the funds he sent to his home state.

The minister of Planning, Mirian Belchior, declared on Friday, January 6, that there was nothing irregular about the use of emergency funds (“créditos extraordinários”) for the construction of dams in the state of Pernambuco, the minister’s home state. She pointed out the minister decided to use funds for two projects in his home state based upon the authority of a temporary measure (“medida provisória”) that provided funding for repairs and prevention of natural disasters.

The summer rains of 2010 left 46 people dead and 98,000 displaced in the states of Pernambuco and Alagoas. 

According to Belchior, studies recommending the construction of dams to avoid a similar tragedy were not ready in time to be included in the 2011 budget, so funding for a dam complex on the Una and Sirinhaem Rivers in Pernambuco was included in the 2012 budget.

“There is nothing irregular about this. It is civil defense money being used for a civil defense project,” said the minister, adding that the dams had to be built in Pernambuco in order to prevent future flooding in both states (Alagoas and Pernambuco).

The ministry had R$216 million for natural disaster works, of which R$98 million went to Pernambuco.

The minister of National Integration’s problem is that his ministry handles natural disaster prevention and as he shipped money to his home state at the beginning of this year to repair the damage from a natural disaster in 2010 and prevent a future natural disaster, southeastern Brazil was being hit by an enormous natural disaster. The worst damage so far has been in Minas Gerais where the situation is so bad and so fluid that Civil Defense officials admit they do not have reliable information on the exact number of people negatively impacted by flooding and landslides (two days ago, the number was around 3 million people). A total of 137 municipalities are now in a state of emergency (that number has been rising daily).

At the same time, in part of the state of Rio de Janeiro, just this week 22 people have died because of flooding and landslides.

Meanwhile, another problem is that exactly a year after one of the worst natural disasters in the mountainous region of the state of Rio de Janeiro killed over 900 people, it turns out that little has been done to repair the damage, let alone to prevent a future tragedy. In Teresópolis, one of the worst hit neighborhoods in the floods and landslides of 2011 was Santa Rita. Today, residents say they still have difficulties with transportation (roads are precarious), there is no garbage collection. Besides, those who lost their homes have not received promised financial assistance for rent and there are complaints that drivers of government trucks that are supposed to be working in a clean up operation hide their vehicles in the bushes and play soccer.

Allen Bennett – translator/editor The News in English - content modified

Link - Começa reunião no Congresso Nacional para ouvir Bezerra sobre denúncias de favorecimento

Link - Miriam Belchior diz que não houve irregularidade em investimentos na construção de barragens em Pernambuco

Link - Bezerra nega favorecimento de Pernambuco no repasse de verbas de prevenção de desastres

Link - Um ano depois de tragédia, moradores de área que ficou isolada em Teresópolis reclamam de demora na recuperação do local