translated from Spanish: Federation of Metro Trade Unions demands that government and company authorities finally remove the 60th Carabineros Station Police Station from Baquedano Station

On Monday, the Federation of Trade Unions of Metro S.A. (Fesimetro) made a formal delivery of three letters to the Minister of the Interior, Gonzalo Blumel; the Director General of Carabineros, Mario Rozas; and the President of the Santiago Metro Board, Louis de Grange, for the urgent withdrawal of the 60th Carabineros Police Station of Baquedano Station.
In the documents delivered, the workers express their “concern at the non-reopening of Baquedano three months after the start of the social crisis in Chile, even though their facilities and equipment are optimally available to operate. Thus, we understand that one of the most important causes of this decision has been the existence of this police facility.”
The missives continue to indicate “if at one point the presence of Carabineros, with its own police station within the network, sought to give security and protection to those who use and work in the system, today they provoke the opposite: as long as they remain in our premises, they do not the station can be made available to users again, because if it were to, it could become a focus that calls for confrontation and endangers the lives not only of the citizens, but of our fellow workers who there they play their duties.”
“Alongside this, the opening of Baquedano becomes increasingly urgent, since a Metro combination station perfectly enabled to operate, cannot remain closed for the nearly three million people who daily use the subway to mobilize , just to protect the police station,” the leaders explain.
In the case of De Grange, he is placed because “we are concerned not to have information regarding strategic plans and protocols that protect the safety of our colleagues who will have to perform functions again in stations now closed by vandalism, and that we know will open gradually this year.”
Finally, FESIMETRO called on the authorities to dialogue with Metro workers, who are preparing for unification into a single union during this 2020, merging more than 4500 technicians, administrators and professionals from the transport of the Chilean capital.

Original source in Spanish