[Excerpt translation provided by Business and Human Rights Resource Centre]

"Coronavirus slows work on Santa Cruz dams" - June 4, 2020

Because of the pandemic, jobs are being postponed again. They were supposed to be operational by 2022, but they won't make it. It's the Néstor Kirchner and Carlos Cepernic dams that were surrounded by controversy.

It is the most ambitious hydroelectric project in the country. The construction of the dams on the Santa Cruz River, which was tendered twice during the Kirchnerist government, suffered another setback and in the midst of the coronavirus, it is now discussing with the government a new plan of works: by 2020 it should be generating energy, something that for various factors is far from meeting those deadlines. Its budget of US$ 4.7 billion cannot be changed, and in the midst of the health emergency, rotation plans were set up after a large number of workers were left for a long time in the camps in the south. It was only on April 13 that the quarantine was relaxed in Santa Cruz, as there was a smaller increase in cases of coronavirus. By then, the UTE (joint venture) made up of Electroingeniería, the Chinese company Gezhouba and Hidrocuyo, had around 1,000 workers in the camps who, because of the ban on movement that was in place, could not return to their respective cities.