Cesar Correa
Without water suitable for human consumption, without irrigation canals, without roads, without a market for their products, without public lighting, without cell phone and television signals, without sufficient telecommunications, education, health, transportation services, without incentives to stay in The parish, Guayquichuma, created on August 29, 1957, is one of the jurisdictions that is suffering the most from the calamities of neoliberalism, since it has not received any attention from the State.
El Prado, the parish head, which has piped water not suitable for human consumption, does not even have the studies to be able to build a drinking water system. The Parish Council has USD 148,000 per year and the first thing it has to do is allocate some USD 20,000 to contract these studies.
Only 10% of the arable land in the parish is used for productive activities for the following reasons: a) There is no irrigation, despite the fact that there could be good canals with water from the Chiguango and Baden streams; b) There are no carriageways necessary for the transport of the products; c) There is no market for their products, such as oranges, pineapples, coffee, tilapia, which are partially sold in El Trapiche, Portovelo, Catamayo, in Loja “the municipalities do not allow them to locate anywhere”; d) It has not been possible to introduce modern machinery and techniques for productive activities; e) The prices they receive are not encouraging, for example, tilapia is sold for USD 2.50 per pound. The parish has been left with 457 inhabitants, of which 70% go to work in other places.
In El Prado, the sanitary sewer discharges into a septic tank that is where the urban area ends, whose useful life has already expired and its bad odors bother the residents, so it must be relocated.
There are only two schools. One in El Prado, the single teacher “Nelson Romero”, with 4 students and the other in the Chiguango neighborhood, also a single teacher, with 5 students. There are more schoolchildren who attend schools from other places and all schoolchildren must study outside the parish. There are children who leave their homes for their schools at 4:00 a.m. and return at 4:00 p.m., without having eaten. Under these conditions it is impossible for them to receive valid instruction for today’s world, these new generations are condemned to be unskilled labor unless they emigrate. The GADs could help by providing transportation to go to study in Sambi or Portovelo.
Willan Diaz Carrión wants to start the change
On February 5, Willan Díaz Carrión was elected vice president of the Parish Council and is already taking steps to improve the reality of his land, to which he has returned to settle, from which he left when he was 14 years old. He has lived in Machala, where he studied at the extension of the Luis Vargas Torres University, in Esmeraldas, where he graduated as an electrical engineer.
Díaz found that a company from Chaguarpamba provided internet service to some families. The cost of the installation was one hundred dollars and the monthly payment of USD 22. With his management he has achieved that, from now on, the installation is free and the monthly payment of USD 20, with which he hopes that more families will be able to contract this service, which It is the most necessary in a parish with minimal Movistar and Claro coverage, and no television signal.
Díaz will promote the installation of a nursery to provide seedlings to farmers, the contracting of studies for the drinking water network, making installations next to the Agua Milagrosa waterfall in the Santa Ana neighborhood so that people can undertake activities tourism, look for ways to increase sales of tilapia and products from the parish, modernize production and manage the paving of the Las Chinchas-Portovelo highway.
This description constitutes a forceful argument in favor of a strong state investment to achieve the modernization of isolated parishes such as Guayquichuma, whose inhabitants have the full right to enjoy the assets that exist in the cities. (YO)