The Argentine government, led by Javier Milei, plans to privatize Transener, the main high-voltage electricity transporter in the country. This move has been flatly rejected by former employees, who consider it a 'strategic asset' for Argentina. According to official estimates, the company is worth about US$200 million, which would help fill the national treasury's coffers. Transener was created using the assets of state-owned companies: SEGBA (Servicios Eléctricos del Gran Buenos Aires), Agua y Energía Eléctrica (AyEE), and Hidronor. According to former employees, these state strategic assets were 'dismantled and privatized during the 1990s through the privatization laws of the Menem era, 23.696 and 24.065'. This process handed control of strategic sectors to private interests, 'generating a deep economic and social damage that persists to this day,' warned Jorge Galati and Fernando Cardozo, former SEGBA employees. They also pointed out that the Argentine state 'maintains a historical debt with the workers of these privatized companies for failing to comply with the Participatory Property Program (PPP), which was supposed to guarantee a shareholding in favor of the employees'. 'Instead of advancing in the repair of this debt, the current government intends to divest itself of the last strategic assets that belong to the national heritage,' they stated. They also said that Transener is 'a highly profitable company, generating income for the FGS and for the National State. The resolution to sell its shares, announced by the national government on the eve of Christmas, is not justified from a financial or patrimonial point of view.' They then explained that 'divesting these shares means giving up control over critical infrastructure for the country's development and consequently the loss of national sovereignty over strategic decisions'. "Let's Protect the National Heritage; let's not repeat the scam of the '90s," stated the Collective of former SEGBA workers in a press release.
