The Insidious Bureaucracy in Venezuela: Biggest Barrier to Social Change

[naaman fletcher]

The bureaucracy in Venezuela is basically a layer, or some would argue, a class, of people which hinders productivity and efficiency, and has a virtual monopoly on decision making, and resource allocation.

Venezuela’s large bureaucracy prevents people, collectively and individually, from controlling their lives and achieving what they are trying to achieve as movements or communities, by requiring exhausting amounts of documents and waiting, by not providing people with the correct information. It is a strategy which allows the bureaucracy to maintain itself in employment.

"I retired from the ministry of education in 2007 and to this date I haven’t received any response about the payment of my pension, of all of our pensions. I sent a letter, with all the necessary documents, directly to the minister explaining my situation, I have severe hypertension. ... and until now I still haven’t received a response. It’s likely we’ll have to wait four years to receive our pension, and as you can understand, one loses buying power and with the recent devaluation, we lose half the amount when they finally pay us. For me, this is a clear example of what bureaucracy is,”

", “For the red bureaucracy the revolution is a torrent of agricultural and industrial credits with which they make their acquaintances comfortable and receive percentages without doing anything other than handle a few bits of paper for some “comrades””.

http://snipurl.com/zuc35

A sad state of affair in Venezuela, or lies by the RW media? What do you all think?

[rabs]

1. What the author says is true

I lived and worked in Caracas in the 80s for a little more than two years. It was during Herrera Campins, so the red-tape is not only now under the Chavez administration; it seems that it has always been so and probably will always be. It is just too deeply ingrained.

The company I worked for had a stand-by profession "bureaucracy buster" when we needed almost anything done; residency permits, driver's licenses, import of needed office supplies not available in Caracas, just about anything that needed some burocratic approval. The man made a pretty good living.

On the same topic, if you have not seen the Cuban film "La Muerte de un Burocrata" I recommend it. It is hilarious. Briefly, a man dies in La Habana. He is buried, but by accident his social security card is buried with him. Burocrats say his widow cannot collect his pension without the card. The family goes in the middle of the night and digs up the coffin to retrieve the card. They take the coffin home, must beg ice to preserve the body. The family three days later goes to the cemetery to re-bury him. Burial is denied because a cemetery burocrat says records show the dead man is already buried. Big fight ensues at the cemetery.

Movie trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVflVrAOYKM

[Judi Lynn]

2. "La Muerte de un Burocrata!" I've got tears in my eyes from laughing. Wow.

Absolutely wonderful.

Very professional, too, I would add.

Thanks for adding that high note, and for your input, your deeper wisdom about this matter.