Milei dissolves public road agency and “will increase the death toll”
Argentina is undergoing another chainsaw strike: Vialidad Nacional, the public agency responsible for national roads, is to be closed. According to Javier Milei's government, this is a crackdown on "corruption." With thousands of kilometers of roads set to be privatized and more than 5,000 people set to lose their jobs, there are fears about safety.
President Javier Milei's ambition to reduce the Argentine state to its bare minimum continues with a chainsaw. Barely having taken office, at the end of 2023, he halted all current and future public works in the country. On July 7, amidst complaints about the poor condition—due to lack of maintenance—of the country's main roads, his government announced the dissolution of the body responsible for almost a century of building and maintaining Argentina's 40,000 kilometers of national roads.
Its functions will now be divided between the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Security, and its more than 5,000 employees will lose their jobs. "The objective is to move towards the privatization of Argentina's land transport network," El País America reports from Buenos Aires .
Last month, the government had already launched a call for tenders to sell the first 741 kilometers of national roads, without finding any interested company. The presidential palace spokesman, quoted by El Pais America, recently announced: “The government will soon open a call for tenders for another 9,120 kilometers which, after decades of waste and corruption, are degraded like never before.”
Courrier International
