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San Salvador. While workers are preparing to go on strike against DELSUR’s management for violating labor rights, the Empresas Públicas de Medellín Group (EPM), the largest consortium of public utilities in Colombia involved in the energy, water (aqueduct and sewage systems) and telecommunications sectors, bought 86.4% of the assets of Distribuidora de Electricidad del Sur, S.A. de C.V. Recently, in October 2010, the same group had acquired 100% of Sociedad Guatemalteca de Distribución Eléctrica Centroamericana II S.A. - DECA II for US$605 million. That company is in charge of the distribution, transmission and commercialization of electricity and is the controlling shareholder of Empresa Eléctrica de Guatemala S.A. - EEGSA―the largest distribution company in Central America with over 930,000 customers―and of COMEGSA, the main power comercialization company in the region.

The sale of DELSUR took place in the midst of a strong cold war in which the electrical trade union of El Salvador, Sindicato de la Industria Eléctrica de El Salvador - SIES, filed claims against the managers of DELSUR, S. A. de C. V. and the transnational company AEI, because ever since the latter settled in El Salvador in 2007, this transnational company has engaged in confrontation and violated the Collective Agreement, thereby affecting job security and workers’ established rights. Furthermore, it stopped investing in the electrical distribution network and in new equipment, which has led to the decay of the grid and several important substations as well as to the deterioration of service provision. As a result, DELSUR’s major customers have started to switch to the competition. Managers have exhibited extreme negligence to the extent that, in order to secure indirect compensation, they have virtually given away their best client portfolio to their competitors, clearly indifferent to the consequences.

Source: Sindicato SIES misindicato@sies.org