PROFITS ON TAP "Here in Bolivia $25 million is the annual cost to hire 3000 rural doctors, 12,000 public school teachers or hooking up 125,000 families who don't have access to the public water system. Which of these are you suggesting Bolivia should do without in order to pay you?" - Jim Schultz - director of the Democracy Center in an open letter to Riley Bechtel, Chief Executive of Bechtel Enterprises. In February 2000, just months after it took over the water system of Bolivia's third largest city, Cochabamba, an American corporation Bechtel hit water users with enormous price increases. They forced some of the poorest families in South America to literally choose between food or water. A popular uprising against the company, repressed violently by government troops, left one 17-year old boy Victor Hugo Daza dead and more than a hundred people wounded. Due to the protests Bechtel was forced to leave and the water supply handed back to public ownership (see SchNEWS 286). Then in November last year Bechtel decided to add to the suffering it had already caused by demanding compensation of $25 million against the Bolivian people - compensation for its lost opportunity to make future profits. The employees of the consortium didn't leave empty handed. They took the hard drives from the computers, the cash left in the company's accounts, and sensitive personnel files. They also left behind an unpaid electric bill for $90,000. Now its saying it wants more. In his letter to the company Jim Schultz continued "Your losses, however you may calculate them, are numbers on a ledger. Mrs. Daza's loss is buried in a cemetery. No one will be representing her in your arbitration. For Bechtel, with revenues of more than $14 billion annually, $25 million is what you take in before lunch on any given workday." www.democracyctr.org * Tell Riley Bechtel - the 51st richest person in America - why does he need to take any more money from the one of the poorest countries in South America. email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
