Re: [CrashList] Re: Human costs of "good business climate" (Live from Porto!)

[Orlando Sabino da Costa Filho]

gostaria de sair da lista
----- Original Message -----
From: João Paulo Monteiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Crashlist <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2001 10:47 AM
Subject: [CrashList] Re: Human costs of "good business climate" (Live from
Porto!)


> Gorojovsky wrote:
>
> > Yes, there has been a terrible accident some 20 miles away from here. A
hundred
> > year old bridge on the Douro broke down when a passenger autocar was
traversing
> > it, at 9 PM yesterday. At least 70 people are supposedly dead. It has
not been
> > possible to retrieve the corpses as yet. This was the result of the
confluence
> > of three crimes:
> > 1) criminal negligence in the maintenance of this structure by the
Government
> > and the applicable public agencies;
>
> Since Nestor has posted this message, maybe I should elaborate and
> qualify this
> first crime, for the story is even more exemplary in terms of
> contemporary
> politico-ideological trends. And most appropriate stuff for the
> Crashlist.
>
> Up to a two years ago, the building and maintenance of all portuguese
> national
> roads was the responsibility of one big public agency - the Junta
> Autónoma das
> Estradas (JAE) - created by the fascist regime.
>
> With Portugal's adherence to the EEC (later EU), a big windfall of money
> - by
> portuguese standards - has been coming yearly from Brussels, as
> structural funds
> for development to poor countries. With characteristic myopia and
> provincialism,
> the portuguese governments have decided to spend the brunt of this money
> of fast
> roads and high-ways. For 15 years now, what has basically been happening
> in this
> country is road building by the government and shopping center building
> by private
> capital.
>
> The public contracts for road building were adjudicated by JAE. There
> were big
> bucks on it. In fact, JAE became a platform for public corruption on a
> giant scale.
> Political parties (mainly the PS and PSD) were financed through money
> allowances
> under the table for public contracts, which also gave ample occasion for
> embezzlement by public officials. The situation became so alarming that
> even the
> chairman of the bosses' confederation, Pedro Ferraz da Costa, started to
> complain
> publicly that profit margins of corporations were being squeezed thin
> by...
> extraordinary expenses.
>
> Though political life here in Portugal is notoriously more opaque than
> in other
> european countries (an operation "clean hands" is out of the question
> here), the
> "socialist" government decided to act, in order to avoid the scandal.
> And what it
> did was dismembering JAE, downsizing, outsourcing and privatizing many
> of its
> functions.
>
> The result is that, for 35.000 portuguese bridges, you now have 19
> technicians
> responsible for their vigilance and maintenance.
>
>
> João Paulo Monteiro
>
> _______________________________________________
> CrashList website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base


_______________________________________________
CrashList website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base