Colombia Solidarity Campaign

Alexander López Maya, president of the Sixth Commission of the House of Representatives, has disputed that Social Capitalisation Funds will contribute to saving public services. He points out that article 14 of the National Development Plan, which promotes this new mechanism, is nothing more than another form of privatisation whose application will start with EMCALI... 

The congressman argues that article 14 is in contradiction with Law 142, which governs the passing of public services into private hands, when it states that "the Funds can be constituted as independent assets administered by trusts, contracted in a way that conforms with the rules of private law".

López Maya also says that the Plan hands extra-constitutional powers to the national Superintendent of Public Services, at the expense of local autonomy. In the case of EMCALI, as in most others, it is the local authority which is the entity owning corporations providing public services.

"I don't believe that the Government is interested in saving EMCALI and maintaining it as an Industrial and Commercial State Corporation (EICE), since this form of state corporation doesn't appear anywhere in the Development Plan. Although Uribe says that he wants to keep EMCALI as an EICE, everything in his Development Plan about these Social Capitalisation Funds shows the contrary".

Alvaro Angarita

* Uribe’s proposed Social Capitalisation Fund for EMCALI will have two categories of shareholders. Preferential “A” shares will be awarded to creditors and suppliers according to the size of the debt to them. The workers and users of EMCALI’s services can obtain category “B” shares. This apparently provided a stake in the corporation for interested members of the community (and the ‘social’ element of the Fund). But it is a trick. All voting on important matters will be based on size of holding of the “A” shares.