LIFE FOR A BUS DRIVER WITH A BUS DRIVER AS PRESIDENT

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: january 2014 :: RMTnews 24 Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro began his career as a bus driver for Caracas Metro. He was a union organiser when the unions were brutally persecuted and some of his colleagues were killed for union activity. Surviving years of clandestine activity, organising workers and supporting Hugo Chávez's movement he went on to become an elected politician, minister for foreign affairs, vice president and, after the death of Chávez in April, he became president. What's it like to live in a country with a bus driver as head of state? I spent a week with some of the 14,000 members of the National Assembly of Socialist Transport Workers in Venezuela to find out. Oscar Gómez drives a bus in Petare, a suburb of the capital Caracas where housing clings to impossibly steep hillsides. He lives here with his wife and two children and works with the 'La Bombilla' transport collective. Oscar is also the administrator for his collective of buses and for three other transport cooperatives, he did a degree in administration with a free adult education programme provided by the socialist government. “It was five years of hard slog” says Oscar, “driving during the day and studying at night, but if you put the effort in, you can make progress”. Another colleague took a degree in law. Today, as well as driving, they provide professional services in administration and law to transport workers. “Before now it was really only wealthy people who could afford to take a degree, it is still hard to do it, but it is possible,” he says. Oscar's children go to a good new school with a catchment area designed to cover wealthy and poor areas together. And, across his neighbourhood there are broad educational programmes to eradicate illiteracy and educate young adults who were failed by the education policies of previous governments. The government has increased spending on education by a massive 800 per cent. The government programme to transform housing in the country is one of the most ambitious anywhere in the world. The government has delivered 250,000 new homes recently, all new builds, most of them fully furnished, including a fridge and cooker and a flat- screen TV. Houses are given to the poorest. Over 400,000 new builds are under way now and the programme will deliver two million new apartments in the next three years. In one project alone in Fuerte Tiuna an area of Caracas, 6,300 new apartments in 42 housing blocks have been built in a matter of months. Oscar and his colleagues may live in housing that is less attractive than the new builds, but he insists that the new houses are for people poorer than himself, people who've been unable to provide adequate housing for themselves. Oscar's elderly father didn't LIFE FOR A BUS DRIVER WITH A BUS DRIVER AS PRESIDENT Sean Hawkey reports on a visit to Venezuela on how the government is constructing a socialist alternative that benefits workers Oscar GÛmez, bus driver for the 'La Bombilla' transport collective and member of the National Assembly of Socialist Transport Workers, in San JosÈ Petare, Caracas.