President delivers Isberyala, first indigenous resettlement project in Panama

Isberyala (loquat tree), as the Nuevo Cartí Urbanization residential area has been renamed by the Guna people themselves, is the project that the National Government, through the Ministry of Housing and Territorial Planning (Miviot), delivered this Wednesday in Guna Yala, an unprecedented fact in this type of social housing constructions within a Panamanian indigenous region or area.

The work will resettle on the mainland 300 families of the Guna ethnic group who live on the Gardí Sugdub island, the largest and most overpopulated in the San Blas Archipelago, and which suffers from problems of overcrowding, lack of basic services, and poor waste disposal. and, above all, a progressive sinking due to the effects of climate change.

On a work tour, the President of the Republic, Laurentino Cortizo Cohen, accompanied by the Minister of Miviot, Rogelio Paredes, delivered the residential work in the Narganá district, which was initially conceived as the Nuevo Cartí Urbanization and which had from its beginning government support to complete its construction.

As of today, it is the new habitat for 1,351 people, of which 753 are women and 598 are men, in addition to a group of 495 minors ranging from zero to 17 years old, according to a report from the Miviot Department of Social Work.

In these human groups, there are also people with disabilities detected in social evaluations, such as the case of Naisha Acosta, 2 years old, to whom President Cortizo Cohen gave a furnished home with special adaptations.

“Panama, through an enormous budgetary effort, has had to use very limited resources, especially in countries like ours, the Caribbean, to use resources to move families from an island to the mainland, and that is a product of the climate crisis. that the world is experiencing,” said the president.

He added that one situation among the effects of the climate crisis is the rise of the seas, which "has forced us here in Panama to move from the island to this urbanization."




The housing solutions of the project, which was built with 12.2 million balboas and in a 14-hectare polygon, have a 300-meter plot of land, an aqueduct system, parks, as well as the construction of the House of Congress and the traditional House of La Chicha, complying with the customs and traditions of the Guna people.