Venezuela Advances in Industrialisation of Country
Earlier this week the Venezuelan government revealed that it was making headway in its attempts to develop the country’s light industrial sector, as plans to export mobile telephones to the rest of the continent were announced.
Liverpool, May 31st 2012 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Earlier this week the Venezuelan government revealed that it was making headway in its attempts to develop the country’s light industrial sector, as plans to export mobile telephones to the rest of the continent were announced.
During a ministers meeting in Caracas, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that state mobile phone factories such as Orinoquia in Petare, Caracas, were getting ready to begin exporting their products to other countries in Latin America, with production at the Orinoquia plant having risen to 800,000 last year.
Born out of an agreement with the Chinese government in conjunction with companies Telecom and Huawei, Orinoquia is an attempt to increase national production in order to decrease the country’s reliance on imports, as well as an attempt to change existing socio-productive relations. Workers at the factory benefit from flexible working hours, living close to their communities and democratic and socialist cooperation in the workplace.
Chavez also went on to state that the government is currently considering the possibility of constructing another mobile phone factory in the Western state of Falcon.
Other advances
This week the government also announced that one of its energy saving light bulb factories in Falcon, constructed as part of a joint venture with the Vietnamese government, will now be able to produce 80,000 light bulbs per year. According to the Venezuelan head of state, the light bulbs use 80% less energy than a normal light bulb.
“This doesn’t agree with capitalism, because capitalism is wasteful,” said Chavez.
Similarly the government is also making advances in other forms of production, such as through cooperatives and “Social Production Businesses” (EPS), small cooperatives where production is aimed at social wellbeing and not at profit maximisation, and where the worker is not alienated or exploited. One of the latest state-citizen production ventures is a carpentry EPS in new socialist city Belen.
Named “the Miracle of Belen,” the new EPS will be manned by 12 workers, 8 men and 4 women, and will produce around 1500 doors a month which will go directly to the government’s mass house building programme.
“I am being productive for the country and furthermore, I don’t have to leave my community,” said 19 year old Carla Pacheco who works at the EPS.
Another worker from the community, Keyla Gonzalez, added that one of the most positive aspects to working there is equal opportunity.
“I am doing what I like and here there is no discrimination, men and women do exactly the same thing,” she said.
