Features
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| Louise Richards, War on Want |
Privatisation, having already taken over public services in the UK, is becoming a condition of loans, aid and debt relief in the developing world. Louise Richards, chief executive of campaign group War on Want, looks at the undeniable link between privatisation, power and poverty
The public service supermarket
It was not so long ago that privatisation changed the face of public
services in Britain amidst protests, job losses and price rises.
The ideology of private sector management of public services has shifted
from being a mainstay of Thatcherism to a key element of New Labour policy
in education, healthcare and other essential services.
The shift spawned debates around issues of accountability, democracy,
employment and service quality. The idea of rights, as a citizen, to essential
services was curtailed long ago in this country.
Unlike the UK, public service sell-off in poor countries is not in the
hands of government.
Greater forces are at work, often behind closed doors. Institutions of
global governance, like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund
(IMF), are pushing the corporate agenda on countries that simply don’t
have the capacity to reject them. Lobbyists, protecting the financial
interests of companies, are hard at work cutting themselves a mouthwatering
slice of the privatisation pie.
Indeed, Fortune magazine was delighted that, “The liquid everybody
needs… is going private, creating one of the worlds’ great
business opportunities.”
Privatisation has gone global, and is having a devastating effect on much
of the Global South. Public unrest is undermining democratic stability
from Colombia to Cambodia, Sri Lanka to South Africa.
In Tucuman, Argentina, people refuse to pay for water turned brown under
a subsidiary of corporate giant Vivendi. South Korea sees hunger strikers
opposing plans to privatise power plants and hospital workers walking
out to keep their health-care systems public. Thousands of workers in
Thailand are currently embroiled in a row over energy privatisation.
It is clear that this kind of unrest, which is ultimately out of governmental
control, is disastrous for development.
The ability to approach the issue in these terms seems to be completely
out of reach for both the institutions mentioned earlier, and multinational
companies.
In a fantastic example of corporate spin Yves Picaud, managing director
of Vivendi declared, “Free water is not so good an idea." Why?
Because, he says, “If you don’t pay for something you don’t
appreciate it.”
This is not only clearly skewed logic, but exemplifies the growing power
that big business has over developing country governments. At a time when
we should be assisting poor countries with mechanisms to create stability,
growth and social justice, such patronising tones must rile people in
the South.
Increasingly the real recipients of aid have become shareholders, not
smallholders. As the march of corporate globalisation runs roughshod over
communities, tenders to provide services to the world’s poorest
people have become a modern day gold rush.
Developing countries have, in effect, been denied the opportunity to determine
their own development paths. It is clearly profit over provision, it is
clearly undemocratic, against development and a major threat to workers’
rights.
The ideology is flawed, the policies dangerous.
The door to the public service supermarket is open, and multinationals
are queuing up to profit out of poverty.
Louise Richards is chief executive of War on Want and former head of international
relations at UNISON.
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