A Government that does not trust its own people

May 25, 2004

I took this story right out of Descifrado, its author, Juan Carlos Zapata, usually has very good information, thus I can not confirm it, but I trust the source. The story is so amazing that I thought it was worth translating. What I fail to understand is why in a country with thousands of unemployed competent engineers, the Government ahs to use a Cuban company for this. The answer may be that they don’t trust anyone. 


 


The great investment made by the Government in updating the technical equipment, transmission and repeaters of Radio Nacional de Venezuela (RNV), during the months of February and March, may be ready to be wasted. The Cuban technicians from the Cosmotel company, which handled the purchase of the telecom equipment, did not get it right with the choice of equipment that was acquired in Spain and the US. There are 37 repeaters of RNV’s signal that are distributed across the country and do not work properly.


 


“The Cuban geniuses ordered the purchase of equipment that only works 100% of its capacity in cold and temperate climate and temperatures. In Zulia and the East the equipment stop working all the time because heat affects them. The only state where they have worked is Merida for obvious reasons (it’s cooler there!). As an alternate solution, Cosmotel proposed the purchase of air conditioning equipment so that the investment is not lost. Only because of the air conditioning it is two hundred thousand dollars more than what ahs been spent, said to Descifrado a Venezuelan engineer who had warned of the inconvenience of the offer by Cosmotel.


 


This technical crisis generated a severe reprimand to the officials in charge of contracting Cosmotel. High Government officials ordered the Director of RN Helena Salcedo and her technical team, an urgent trip to Cuba to attempt to solve the problem and activate the warranty of the equipment which includes the replacement of those that are damaged in a period that does not exceed a year from the time of installation. Salcedo will return at the end of this week. 

This entry was posted on May 25, 2004 at 8:56 pm and is filed under Venezuela.

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