Military

DATE=3/11/03

TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT

TITLE=SALVADOR / PROTEST

NUMBER=5-53212

BYLINE=CATHERINE ELTON

DATELINE=GUATEMALA CITY

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: Thousands of Salvadorans are gearing up for a march Thursday against the government's privatization policies. The protest comes as a group of doctors and other hospital workers in El Salvador continue their six-month strike. The protests and strike are examples of a region-wide backlash against the sale to private companies of state operated services. Catherine Elton has this report.

TEXT: ///AMBIENT SOUND OF STREET-SIDE APPOINTMENT EST AND FADE//

In the shade of a yellow tent, on a blocked-off, downtown San Salvador street, a cardiologist takes Juan Alberto Cabreras blood pressure. The 82 year old is one of the more than 300 patients that striking doctors have been attending each day, free-of-charge, outside a strike-torn social security hospital. Mr. Cabrera says he supports the strike because he thinks that when it comes to the dangers of privatization, he says, these doctors' diagnosis is accurate.

/// CABRERA ACT IN SPANISH ESTABLISH THEN FADE UNDER ///

He says they privatized electricity and it made it more expensive. He says the government has given the population an example of what privatization is like and that example has been destructive.

Protesters plan to march in the streets demanding that the government stop what they say are plans to privatize the social security medical system.

Privatizations were pushed in 1990s by the World Bank and other multilateral lenders. Across the region, governments anxious to improve desperate economies and receive much-needed loans, adopted the policies.

Critics say privatizations in Latin America have further concentrated wealth and driven up the costs of services without making them more efficient.

/// START OPT ///

Violent protests in Bolivia in April 2000 and in Peru last June, were able to suspend, at least temporarily, plans to privatize certain state run utilities in those countries. In Costa Rica, protesters recently took to the streets, fearing that negotiations underway for a free trade agreement with the United States would result in a reversal of their country's unique resistance to privatization.

/// END OPT///

But Mauricio Ramos, the director of the Salvadoran Social Security Institute, says the strike and protests are merely a political ploy aimed at scaring voters away from the ruling party in Sunday's legislative and mayoral

elections.

/// RAMOS ACT ///

We have been very clear, there is no plans to privatize.

/// END ACT ///

But doctors say that their fears are warranted. Laundry, food service and security have already been contracted to private companies. In late February the doctors association revealed that medical services were also being privatized -- and in a highly questionable manner.

A company owned by the nation's minister of health, Francisco Lopez Beltran, was one of three companies contracted late last year to perform social security patient eye surgeries.

///AMBIENT SOUND OF PROTEST, FADE UNDER ///

Days after the news broke, Dr. Roberto German Tobar, a leader of the doctors association, was one of dozens of white-robed doctors, protesting outside the health ministers office, demanding his resignation.

/// TOBAR ACT IN SPANISH ESTABLISH AND FADE UNDER ///

He says the law is clear: no minister can compete for a government contract. He says the benefits of this contract are for the health minister and his company, for him to profit -- off of health services.

The doctors association has filed a criminal complaint over the contract.

/// REST OPT ///

Since the strike began in September, some 260 of the 600 striking doctors have gone back to work and social security has made 350 new hires. Director Ramos says that the social security hospitals are now working at close to their full capacity.

But those still striking say they wont go back to work until there is a government commitment to reform social security without privatizing it. Meanwhile they say the situation is far from normal inside the hospitals.

Strikers say medical residents are doing the work of full-fledged doctors, that general practitioners are doing the work of specialists and that as a result deaths are on the rise. (signed)

NEB/CE/RH/MAR