Verónica lives in Parque Chacabuco in the City of Buenos Aires with her teenage daughter. Last month she heard and saw how many homes of working families who live in small houses, in many cases also very precarious, suffered the arrival of bills with amounts that were truly unaffordable.
“At that moment I told my friends and family: the truth is that I’m getting by because I paid almost $7,000 for electricity this July.” But the peace of mind didn’t last long. This week, Edesur He sent him a billdue on August 9, $130.000. Almost a 2.000 % increase in one month. The same as the rates increased in the first two years of Macri’s administration, from 2016 to 2018.
The first thing Veronica did as soon as she received the bill was to go and complain to the Edesur office closest to her house, but they didn’t even let her in. “I had to go twice so they could take my claim and they warned me that even if I complain next month, they would bill me the same amount.”
Cases like Veronica’s have multiplied in recent times. There is no longer an adjective that can describe the situation. tariff increase of mercy and the privatized as Edesur o Edenor“90 thousand for electricity, I live in La Matanza. I am a teacher. Between rent and electricity, I easily spend 60% of my salary,” is another case.
It should be remembered that the removal of subsidies for public services, which implies these values in rates, is one of the requests that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been demanding for some time, even under the previous Government.
But tariffs are not the only way companies make money. As part of the privatization, concessionaires receive subsidies, are rich, and reality shows that they will not stop improving the service.
The ones that are quiet are the bills that are arriving in the suburbs 👇 (wages would not be beating inflation like that) pic.twitter.com/a78m6msR5I
— 🔴 ᴠɪʀɢɪɴɪᴀ ɢᴏ 🔴 (@mavirginiagomez) July 28, 2024
There are two more ways in which these business groups make profits. One: the debt forgivenessalso millionaires, that are given to them from time to time by different governments. Two: the job insecurity that these employers impose on their workers. “Edesur outsources maintenance crews, which are often not certified, and impose 12 or 14 hour work days without days off on their workers. And that has repercussions on the service,” explained one outsourced Edesur worker who was fired in a special report made by this means.
End the privatized scam so that public services become a right again
We must make a big campaign against these rate hikes and his cancellation. But it is also necessary that everyone energy system be nationalized and managed by specialized workers and technicians, carrying out a sustainable national plan to guarantee the population a cheap and quality service and to carry out the energy transition. Without this perspective, nor that of the nationalization of all public services, there is no way that they can satisfy the needs of the population, and above all of the most popular sectors that live in areas where the quality of services is very precarious, or where there is neither a gas network, nor sewers, nor electricity lines.
At the same time, we must unite all the claims and demands of all the sectors that are being harmed by the national government’s adjustment and coordinate major common actions to be able to confront it and defeat its adjustment plan.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
