The government of neoliberal president and chainsaw juggler Javier Milei has ordered the definitive closure of the Ente Nacional De Obras Hídricas De Saneamiento (ENOHSA), a key national institution for controlling the quality of drinking water. The closure comes days after the government confirmed that it will move ahead with further closures and “restructuring” in the state. After closing down the Trenes Argentinos Capital Humano (DECAHF), the government announced that ‘at least four or five other state-owned companies will be closed’, among them the Casa de la Moneda, in charge of printing banknotes and coins in Argentina.
The purpose of the state-owned ENOHSA was to plan, carry out and manage water and sanitation infrastructure works throughout the country. It was also supposed to control the quality of drinking water and sanitation services. As a pretext, the government accused ENOHSA of circumventing the national administration’s expenditure control. In an interview, the Minister of Ecomomy, Luis Caputo called ENOHSA a “hotbed of corruption”.
As El Litoral writes:
The political decision is to put an end to an organisation that was created at the instigation of the IDB (Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, International Development Bank) and the Pan American Health Office (now the Pan American Health Organisation) in the 1960s. One only has to listen to President Javier Milei’s speech at the United Nations to understand that his ‘Enohsa, out’ is deeply rooted in conviction and that this decision will have concrete consequences for the rural population. (…)
While the metropolitan area of the federal capital and greater Buenos Aires, as well as the major cities have enviable rates of healthy water supply, in the rest of the country large sections of the population live on contaminated well water. In Santa Fe, the hydro-arsenicism of its western fringe is serious. The province has around 350 small towns with drinking water (and in some cases sewerage) services, part of a development made possible by Enohsa, among others.
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