NewsWhore
11-07-2006, 04:30 PM
In her opinion column in today's Diario Libre, award-winning journalist Ines Aizpun writes:
"El Nacional newspaper calls them 'the owners of the country' and the rest, at last, have stopped referring to them as union members. They are the transport entrepreneurs, a powerful group that subjects their users to the most degrading of situations. And to top it all, one has to pay for it. They treat their customers as if they were doing them a favor, while they mistreat them physically and morally. (And we paid for half their fleet: "Renoves", "pollitos" and other new inventions).
"Would supermarkets be allowed to use pieces of plastic stuck together with tape instead of doors? Would shoe store vendors be allowed to fondle their customers' feet? Would grocery store vendors pack in their clients, while others sell rotten food? Would airlines be allowed to fly using rusted and half-repaired vehicles? Would a barber work without a shirt, exposing his underarm hair and spitting out of the window?
"No, nobody would be allowed to work in such hygiene and safety conditions, with the monopoly, subsidies, and preferential treatment that they enjoy, while punishing their users who are forced to use cars and buses that should have been out of circulation long ago. Curiously, they pass the "revista" review sticker inspection every year.
"And they continue, those dirty, oily, stinking "conchos" and "voladoras" that charge for such a display of arrogance and muck. So far no government has had sufficient authority to regulate this, so that we can have a public transport system that is dignified in its form, price and service.
"All we need now is for some visionary to come along, and organize them into a 'cluster,' now that they cannot kid us by saying they are a 'union', and after attending a successful workshop, they might end up obtaining even more privileges. Stranger things have happened."
For comments, write to IAizpun@diariolibre.com
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#6)
"El Nacional newspaper calls them 'the owners of the country' and the rest, at last, have stopped referring to them as union members. They are the transport entrepreneurs, a powerful group that subjects their users to the most degrading of situations. And to top it all, one has to pay for it. They treat their customers as if they were doing them a favor, while they mistreat them physically and morally. (And we paid for half their fleet: "Renoves", "pollitos" and other new inventions).
"Would supermarkets be allowed to use pieces of plastic stuck together with tape instead of doors? Would shoe store vendors be allowed to fondle their customers' feet? Would grocery store vendors pack in their clients, while others sell rotten food? Would airlines be allowed to fly using rusted and half-repaired vehicles? Would a barber work without a shirt, exposing his underarm hair and spitting out of the window?
"No, nobody would be allowed to work in such hygiene and safety conditions, with the monopoly, subsidies, and preferential treatment that they enjoy, while punishing their users who are forced to use cars and buses that should have been out of circulation long ago. Curiously, they pass the "revista" review sticker inspection every year.
"And they continue, those dirty, oily, stinking "conchos" and "voladoras" that charge for such a display of arrogance and muck. So far no government has had sufficient authority to regulate this, so that we can have a public transport system that is dignified in its form, price and service.
"All we need now is for some visionary to come along, and organize them into a 'cluster,' now that they cannot kid us by saying they are a 'union', and after attending a successful workshop, they might end up obtaining even more privileges. Stranger things have happened."
For comments, write to IAizpun@diariolibre.com
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#6)