Reforms to punish environmental crimes in El Salvador are approved

This Legislative Assembly release was published using machine translation.

These reforms to the regulations are intended to reinforce the catalog of infractions to protect the environment, said Carlos Roque, legal director of the Ministry of the Environment.

Also, he pointed out that art. 89 of the law that contemplates the setting of sanctions was declared unconstitutional in sentence 115-2012, so the Ministry of the Environment did not have the powers to sanction environmental infractions.

"We are looking for the effectiveness of the sanctioning process," Roque said.

"At last we are going to fill a very big void that the environment had and that we had been left with," said the President of the commission, deputy Sandra Martínez.

The parliamentarian affirmed that with these reforms the mechanisms of ecological sanctions for those who break the law have been restored.

"This comes to solve the problem of environmental degradation that was abandoned for years," he said.

For her part, Deputy Norma Lovo said that a very big step has been taken in terms of caring for the environment. "I am satisfied to have given tools to the Ministry of the Environment," he said.

For his part, Deputy Raúl Castillo said that with these reforms the "lock on something that has been obstructed is removed. Our priority is to give the Environment Ministry the tools so that it can sanction."

He also pointed out that the approval of the reforms was a matter of priorities and on environmental issues, there should be no opposition. "Today we empower the Ministry of the Environment to put order in the house," he emphasized.

This reform is approved, after the initiative of President Nayib Bukele and through the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Fernando López, the piece of correspondence was presented last week.