Interview with Evo Morales, President of Bolivia(November, 05, Rome, Sri Lanka Guardian) Bolivian President Evo Morales visited Italy this week to receive a special award for his government's commitment to social and health issues. He has made these issues a "political priority."
The award was presented by the Pio Manzù Centre, a research organisation based in Rimini in northeast Italy that studies economic, scientific and social policies.
Besides meetings with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and foreign affairs minister Massimo D'Alema, Morales met members of the 30,000 Bolivian community in Rome, and members of Italian social movements.
Morales told Rome's Bolivians that before he was elected President in December 2005, Bolivia received 300 million dollars a year in tax revenues from the oil industry. Following nationalisation of energy reserves, Bolivia now receives 2 billion dollars annually.
The increased revenues are being used for education and healthcare, and for creation of a microcredit programme, Morales says.
Some excerpts from the interview put together by Sabina Zaccaro:
Q: You have been awarded by an Italian organisation this week for your government's programmes for better access to health and nutrition, focusing on children particularly. Could you give us some details of these steps?
Evo Morales: Our challenge is to work for all Bolivians without prioritising any sector, but my first obligation is to the people in need; these are the children, the old, the poor. Talking about children, we are also implementing a policy called 'Zero Malnutrition' (Hambre Zero) to attend to the issue of health for children.
Our next step will focus on nutrition; we are implementing a project on dairy processing plants this year for milk and yogurt. I have suggested -- and hope it will have good results -- to make yogurt with quinoa (a crop growing in the Andean region of South America acclaimed for its protein content).
We are going to train mayors to buy these products and give them to children in their school meals; instead of buying cookies from Argentina, from other countries, why not use what we have.
We have also identified three processing plants for orange juice in different regions that will combine milk and juices. Children will have these for free with their school lunch. I have other plans but they need further development.
We aim to give our children a quarter or half litre of milk per day. We already have machinery ready for this, and we will soon receive other processing plants, including those for citrus fruits.
Q: Your government has teamed up with Cuba to strengthen health services as well...
EM: We are strengthening access to health all over the country. This year we have so far 40 hospitals of 'second level' (de Segundo nuivel), and 11 ophthalmology centres donated by Cuba. They have undertaken from 100,000 to 150,000 eye operations. The hospitals have also treated a huge majority of the 380,000 Bolivians affected by the floods in February.
Q: What is the outcome of these policies?
EM: In Bolivia eye surgery costs usually around 1,000 dollars, and in Europe I have been told around 3,000 to 4,000 dollars. Imagine how much money we have saved to Bolivian people, and with good results. Not only to the poor, but colonels, generals, lawyers, middle class people.
Q: According to the U.N., almost 40 countries in the world have adopted definite laws against domestic violence and for protection of women. Thirteen of them are Latin American, Bolivia among them. But a patriarchal society still restrains women's emancipation. What are your policies here?
EM: One first action has been to strengthen the "women protection brigades" (trained women's groups providing protection to women and their children). Policewomen have been given new powers, and are very efficient, though we need to improve this further.
But these are problems over which I feel ashamed. Special equipment is needed for such training, and we still have financial shortcomings. The weakest and most harassed are usually women and children, and we need to do something jointly about both. Municipalities are not efficient enough, they get stuck in bureaucracy.
But we have seen interesting results, and I work to strengthen and support such initiatives. There are some new improvements in the police to help protect the family, starting with women. And for the first time, Bolivia has women ministers.
Q: How many women do you have in your government?
EM: I have five women ministers -- for health, education, micro-enterprise, agriculture, and justice. Women have a better way to analyse problems from the social and economic, and also the family point of view.
Q: What plans do you have besides social programmes for health and education for achieving the MDGs (millennium development goals agreed in 2000 to cut poverty and improve health and education)?
EM: In the social field we look for equality; in the political, to eliminate discrimination, and in the economic, to make good use of our national resources.
Our programme for social development has had two important measures: one is the lifetime pension Dignity (Bonus Dignidad) under which people above 60 are given 200 bolivianos per month (7.8 bolivianos to a dollar). In Bolivia almost 90 percent professionals do not retire with a pension.
The second measure is the scholar bonus Juancito Pinto, also of 200 bolivianos a month. This is for buying school supplies, though we learned that the bonus is also being used to buy shoes, which are otherwise unaffordable for the majority of rural children.
Q: Talking of major income differences, you spoke of the importance of reducing the imbalance between European countries and Bolivia in order to avoid major migration. What are your plans?
EM: Investments, strengthening the economy, tapping into our natural resources and industrialising them, in order to obtain more resources and support young and poor people so they may have higher salaries. But this is not easy.
Courtesy- IPS
 Bolivian President Evo Morales visited Italy this...){kind=link}
Post a Comment