Agence Haitïenne de Presse

Eddy Labossière, Secretary General of the Association of Haitian Economists (AEH), said Monday that modernization of the National Telephone Company (Téléco) is indispensable to prevent it from disappearing.

Several hundred employees received termination letters last Friday and this Monday as part of the process of privatization of the company announced by the Haitian government.

The situation was tense all day Monday at Téléco, where the atmosphere was far from that of a normal workplace, given that everyone expected that his termination letter might arrive at any moment.

Most company departments have been decapitated. Only three out of twelve still had directors as of this Monday, with the total number of workers destined to be cut from 2,800 to only 800 across the country.

Several employees who were not yet affected by the wave of sackings, or who were to be spared from dismissal, said they were still living from moment to moment because they feared that the new owners will fire them without any compensation after the privatization is complete.

Some did not conceal their intention to leave the company. But, the government pointed out, this is not a case of voluntary departures.

The AEH secretary general explained that the law allows modernization of any public institution that finds itself in financial difficulty, and also allows for the signing of a management contract with experts and allows allows the government to proceed to grant a concession of capitalize the enterprise in such a way that the State has the possibility of retaining an ownership position greater than 51%.

He said that above all, Téléco must be saved, and he deplored that over the past 30 years, the authorities have taken advantage of this institution by milking it as if it were a cow, thus preventing it from developing itself.

Téléco was valued at close to $500 million just 10 years ago, said Mr. Labossière, while today it is worth no more than $100 million.

And one would need to invest about US$250 million to put it back on track, which is an amount the Haitian State does not have, he asserted.

Mr. Labossière did advocate fair and equitable compensation for the dismissed workers and the possibility that they might have a stake in some way in Téléco after its modernization.

For his part, the secretary general of the New England Human Rights Organization for Haiti, Josué Renaud, deplored the fact that President Préval is charging "headlong into privatization". While he acknowledged that certain public institutions are in poor financial condition, he asserted that nothing has been done to try to improve them before resorting to privatization.

He emphasized that wherever governments have opted for privatization in Latin America, their efforts resulted in failure, and Haiti continues to import goods that are manufactured by private companies that used to owned by the State, such as the Haitian Cement Company.

Josué Renaud denounced what he labeled "the arrogance" of President Préval who "seems to think that when he takes such important decisions that have tremendous impact on Haiti's public institutions that he doesn't owe anybody any explanations unless they happen to be prospective buyers of State assets".

Indeed, said the Organization's director, no dialogue has been undertaken with the employees of Téléco. "The word comes down from on high", and the word is "12 months of compensation and that's that", said the human right's organization's director.