Engineering and privatization
The most influential engineers of Colombia complain about the last years deterioration of engineering in universities and the work sector. However, in one of their most important symposiums, the main subject was how to stimulate the privatization and sale of national organizations to international companies. It seems that they do not understand that the crisis is caused by why they are trying to stimulate.
Nowadays, to question the policies of privatization and neo-liberalism professed by the organizations of international credit is not well taken. It is assumed that what these organizations recommend is the most convenient for the countries indebted; they promote training programs in which they convince the participants of the benefits of becoming indebted with them.
What does happen when giving water to communities is no longer a good business for the international organizations that bought the aqueducts? Companies are only interested on things that are beneficial to Colombians only when those things produce profits for the shareholders.
The largest segment of Colombia’s economy is to export nonrenewable resources like oil, natural gas and coal. On the other hand, Colombian debt is twice as much as the total exports of the country.
By connecting these two facts, we understand that foreign organizations take what the country produces (in its majority nonrenewable natural resources) to pay to for the state debt and its interests. This it is not a new phenomenon, countries have followed the same pattern before; the only difference is the economists slang used to today to describe it. Privatization is only another name for colonialism.
