A new blackout shook the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires in the early hours of this Sunday. At 3 in the morning, about 500 thousand homes in the city and the conurbano were dark, in the middle of winter. Caballito, Almagro, Balvanera, San Nicolás, Congress, Boedo and even the Obelisk and the Nation Congress were completely dark in the city of Buenos Aires. In the Conurbano, Avellaneda, Lanús, Quilmes, Berazategui and Ezeiza also suffered the total lack of service. The ENRE (National Electricity Regulatory Entity) confirmed that, at 3:15, Edesur had 492,345 users without light and Edenor added others almost 3,000. In some places, the cut lasted more than an hour; In others, the wait stretched until Sunday morning.
The anger exploded in social networks with images of dark streets, off -bass buildings and outraged families. The hashtags #edesur and #sinluz quickly became a trend. The ones multiplied complaints about the lack of answers and the lousy attention of the distributorswhich did not provide explanations or concrete solutions while Miles still without light.
Increasingly recurring cuts: the fraud of the privatized
Light cuts have become an increasingly recurring thing. July 1, During the coldest night of the year in this region, almost 100,000 users were affected by another blackout while temperatures reached a minimum of 0 °.
March 5, More than 600 thousand users were also left without electricity for a failure in two high voltage lines. Essential services such as trains, subtes and even traffic lights collapsed. The background is always the same: privatized companies that prioritize their profits, do not invest in infrastructure and leave without answers to thousands of users every time the demand goes up or the climate squeezes. They receive subsidies from the State, charge increasingly high rates, but the service remains disastrous.
The panorama worsens with layoffs in Industrias F. Secco, the company in charge of restoring the emergency service. The “Firefighters of the Light” were dismissed arbitrarily, just when they are most missing: they are the ones who resolve the mass cuts and reconnect whole neighborhoods.
The owner of Secco, Jorge Balán (charged in the cause of the notebooks for coimas for payments that he acknowledged having made officials of the Ministry of Planning years ago), advances in an anti -indical and discriminatory offensive that is the prelude to the labor reform that is cooked between the government, the businessmen and the union bureaucracy. Dismissals that are not only an attack on labor rights, but further aggravate the crisis of the energy system by dismantling a key area for the reconnection and maintenance of electrical service.
You have to end the business of a few
The cuts of light and the dismissals in SECCO are the two sides of the same problem: the Argentine energy system is in the hands of entrepreneurs who only seek their own benefit and that they already demonstrated that they have no interest in guaranteeing reliable and efficient access to energy. The rate paid by users includes an emergency service that, with dismissals in Secco, directly does not exist. A double scam, since the service provided while they continue to charge for something they decided to dismantle.
The provincial government so far looks the other way. After two months of conflict and seven hearings, Jorge Balán’s signature did not present any favorable proposal for workers and the provincial ministry of provincial labor that Walter Correa drives did not even take the most elementary measure in favor of the workers, prioritizing the businesses that SECCO has with the provincial state, such as agreements with the CEAMSE. A company that does not have any type of crisis but that empties the service and attacks those who hold it every day, harming not only their families but thousands of users who will see as a consequence an increasingly poor service.
Therefore, the claim against the privatized is inseparable from the struggle for reinstatement of the “Firefighters of Light” and the fight for a service that prioritizes quality and access to something as essential as electricity. End the privatized business and ensure that energy is a right for all and not just a business for a few.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
