MEXICO CITY – A polling company said August 2 that three of its employees were missing in the same violence-plagued area of western Mexico where six pollsters from another firm disappeared over the weekend.

“One of our supervisors and two pollsters... disappeared in the community of Cofradía, Michoacán, the same place where the six workers from Mitofsky disappeared,” said Itzel Ramírez, spokeswoman for Parametria polling company.

The company lost contact with its employees around midday Aug. 1 and had reported their disappearances to the authorities, Ramírez said.

The employees had been gathering information ahead of Michoacán state’s November 13 gubernatorial elections.

A spokesman from the state attorney general’s office said Aug. 1 that six employees from Mitofsky polling company went missing over the weekend and that authorities had opened a kidnapping investigation.

A helicopter search operation was launched Jul. 31 in the area, Apatzingán deputy prosecutor Ciro Jaimes Cienfuegos told AFP.

Cofradía is in the municipality of Apatzingán, where the Knights Templar and La Familia drug gangs are known to operate.

[AFP, 03/08/2011]