Cursed rate | Page12

While at the Metropolitan Design Center, gas distributors had requested, at an official public hearing, further increases "to ensure the sustainability of the service," two multi-sectoral events were launched to challenge logic. unlimited increases. The rejection of tariffs was the reason for the social movements, which with a bow of the trade unions brought to Congress a project against the increases. At the same time, intendentes del Conurbano and multisectoral neighbors organized a kind of counter hearing (called large national audience) at the Astros theater where, for seven hours, neighbors and specialists presented cases and proposals. The aim is to generate consensus and political strength for a new public services law. And much more.

"There are things we can only do odd years," said one of the stewards in PáginaI12. For the leaders of the Peronism of Buenos Aires, organizing the Great Public Hearing was a form to take a new step in building the desired unit, with a view to the month of October.

Gabriel Katopodis (Mayor of San Martín), Verónica Magario (La Matanza) and Fernando Gray (Esteban Echeverría) were in the theater. The presidential candidates, Agustín Rossi and Felipe Solá, deputies Hugo Yasky and Leonardo Grosso and the defender of the city of Buenos Aires, Guido Lorenzino. Among the trade union referents were Suteba holder Roberto Baradel and Walter Correa of ​​Curtidores. And district opposition weight benchers, such as Federico Martelli (La Plata) and Santiago Cafiero (San Isidro).

As a new topic, the activity led to sharing the scenario of multisectoral neighbors (and members of organizations with a broader profile), with supporters. At the theater, at the rate of three minutes per speaker, from 11 am to 6 pm, counselors, members of the family of dependents, progressive-oriented activists, priests, evangelical pastors, workers of the ENRE, consumer badociations have spoken.

Valeria González, from the city of San Pedro, said: "We needed to stand at the door of the electricity company and the municipality to express our dissatisfaction." electricity, water and gas must be recognized as one of the most fundamental rights, the right of citizenship.The problem we face has no public dimension, which forces us today. the people to share the refrigerator because the neighbor cut the light and cook again with a carafe.

Lorena Riesgo, city councilor of La Plata, spoke about "enriching distributors". He badured that the electricity company "in his very city, in 2017," Edelap raised $ 2,700 million, four times more than its five-year investment plan. "

Luciano Fernández of ATE Capital pointed out that "the subsidies have been removed and the tariffs have been dollarized", with the result that "the impact of service spending on our salaries has gone from 6 to 21 % ".

Santiago Deschutter, Luján Multisectorial, said that "we must advance in the cancellation of debt". Like many others, his proposal was that energy is a right and can not be controlled by companies.

The basic idea that has worked throughout the hearing is that energy resources and utilities belong to the state even when they are managed by a private entity. In this context, the state must ensure that rates are fair, equitable and reasonable.

In December, the intendants came to file an application for protection in a federal court in La Plata against rate increases, which had still not been completed. One of his arguments comes from a Supreme Court decision and he says the rates must be "proportional and accessible".

"None of the increases in these three years have considered this situation, no wage income or profitability of an SME or a trade increases with rising rates." Another problem is where was this money because we do not see that companies have invested or that the quality of services has improved.There is a complicity of the companies that used the money to place it in the financial and government cycle who is looking on the other side, "warned Gabriel Katopodis, the head of the municipality of San Martin.

Andrea Manzi of the multisectoral network said that her intention was to lead this participation program in as many places as possible. "We have to make compromises with the legislators, who realize that it is a reality that strikes us.We want that in each city the district referents, the neighborhood festivals, the neighborhood clubs can meet and discuss this. that goes on at home with tariffs.We have to install the notion of human right related to electricity, water and electricity services.A thing to say and another on which to work: it is now up to us to decide.We are in an election year and it is important to make efforts because I do not think everyone has determined the cause of the rate. "

The first multi-sectoral were created three years ago, with the 2016 rates. Although it is a clear participation of activists entered into politics with the Kirchner, they are considered a form of construction that transcends the partisan. "It's the challenge of unity: transcend the seal," summarized Manzi.

At the ENRE

The cut against the ENRE – the body of regulation of the electric service – and the mobilization with the Congress had for actors the independent CTA, alongside the unions of the CGT and the popular movements of the so-called triumvirate, from the current Clasista and Combativa, CTEP and Barrios Standing: also in this walk of the unit was expressed the odd year.

Behind the flag with the slogan Maldito Tarifazo were Hugo Godoy (ATE Nacional) and Juan Carlos Schmid (of the Argentine Confederation of Transport Workers), who spoke in front of ENRE. After the mobilization went to Congress. A draft resolution to freeze rates was presented to opposition members. Héctor "Gringo" Castro, of CTEP, Fredy Mariño of CCC and Norma Morales, of Barrios de Pie, were responsible for the closing ceremony of the day.

The project proposes the immediate suspension of tariffs in the utilities of electricity, gas, water and transport, canceling the announcements already made to bring the situation back to the beginning of 2018. And calls "to a broad appeal to discuss new bases of operation of the national energy system which today has been turned into a box of irrational profits from a set of oligopolistic companies badociated with a state accomplice and partner of this dispossession " .

The central point of this discussion is related to those expressed in the Astros theater audience: to consider energy as a strategic good and as a human right. The presented text emphasizes that energy "is at the same time a critical economic good as a social good, of the common good, of the people, therefore it configures a good of public interest".

Finally, he proposes to recover from an integrated and centralized planning criterion of the energy system. "We must trace the infernal course of deregulation, which has destroyed infrastructure, made no investments, and endangered people's access to the income of a fragmented group of companies. have benefited for more than 70 years from the property that the national state has bought., built with the resources of all the Argentineans ".