By: Seaira Christian-Daniels
Produced and edited by: Kaylyn Hlavaty
Morning traffic staccatoes along the Autopista, one of the two central highways in Santiago, Chile. The subtle scan of a toll-tracking device ushers Myriam Gregorio de las Heras to her final stop: Sanhattan, the largest and most modern area of Santiago. Sanhattan is the central location for business negotiations in Santiago and the epitome of development in the city.
De las Heras is among the nearly 60 percent of Chileans who commute to work into the downtown district of the city each day, according to a most recent 2002 Chilean Census Report. Highway tolls and wasted time, however, have caused several workers to challenge the efficiency of the Chilean transportation system amid much of the development downtown.
Some, like Camila Risso, a nurse who is continuing her education at Universidad Católica in Santiago, said she foots the bill to live on the outskirts of the city for the sake of her sanity.
“Santiago is too busy. It’s too noisy, so I prefer to get out. I prefer to go out and have a little bit of peace.” Though she says it is considerably more expensive to live in the suburban region of Region Metropolitano, the Metropolitan District, the chance to have a garden, trees in her yard, and a swimming pool allured her.
Camila travels 45 minutes to and from work each day. Initially, she said, the drive did not cause alarm, but she’s beginning to feel worn out. “You spend about two hours a day driving. In the beginning it wasn’t that hard, but when it’s everyday. It’s stressful.”
Are the Roads to Blame?
Travelers come from small towns littered around the boisterously active capital city. The problem, de las Heras and Risso say, is the inefficient design of the roads downtown.
Francisco Contreras, a mine development engineer, says Chile’s copper mining industry has increased travel to and from Santiago. In Anagosto, the major mining city, there is only one main road, which often causes traffic congestion.
“This city has a huge floating population--people that come to Anagosto just to work at the copper mines and then go back to Santiago, La Serena, or Concepción--it becomes a real issue having a single "main" avenue.”
Santiago’s structure guarantees the centralization of services, public offices, and commerce, said Alejandro Aedo, an Engineering Specialist for BHP Billiton, a resource management firm. However, Jorge Jerez, an electrical engineer from Santiago, said the city structure has lagged behind the quickly increasing demographic. He says the mode of transportation must fit the population.
“The viability of the structures [downtown] doesn’t satisfy the requirements for vehicular transportation and connectivity required to improve some the congestion on the streets,” he says.
A Google map image of the streets around downtown Santiago appears the same as many other roads in major urban centers—with three-lane highways and express lanes attached on each side. Yet, as with many urban cities across the globe, the most developed cities have experienced mass amounts of congestion and inconvenience.
A more simple solution
Chilean workers say the fix for congestion is to reinstitute the use of a more simple form of transportation. Diego Barros, a construction worker who has decided to live in the downtown region of the city, says though it is hard to find work in Santiago because of intense competition between small businesses and big corporations, he chooses to stay in downtown Santiago so he does not have to endure the hassel-prone public transportation system.
“I walk to work, but I try to use my bike in most cases. If it’s more than 40 km, then I take public transportation.” Barros said biking to work is a growing trend in younger professionals.
Maricel Brugerolles, who lives and works in Santiago, proposes the implementation of bike routes around the city to allow people who live closer to their jobs to bike ride to work everyday. “There’s a parallel life with respect to transportation. The government should divide the highways to decrease the amount of volume of traffic,” she says.
Though Chile records the second lowest gas emissions in 2012, the country had the second largest percent increase in gas consumption that year of BP’s top-eight monitored Central and South America Countries. These statistics explain government of Santiago issuing its first ever pre- emergency environmental alert in May of 2012. A second alert limiting vehicles without catalytic converters to a certain number of hours per day was issued in May 2011. Catalytic converters transform toxic vehicle emissions into less toxic forms.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Amid increasing urban development, Chileans say pedal backward
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Discrimination against Women in Egypt
By Alexandru Cristea
Edited by Chen Lou
Government records for unemployment in Egypt show that women are mostly impacted by this problem. Unemployment has been one of the biggest social problems in the country for the last two decades. Several characteristics define this steady increase in the number of people out of work.
According to the Egyptian Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistic, the level of unemployment has risen steadily in the last decade. Unemployment levels in the last quarter of 2009 were situated at 9.4% of the existing labor force. In addition, a 2009 report released by the World Bank showed that Egyptian labor force increases each year by around 3%, despite a continuous decrease in the demand for labor. Furthermore, women bear the brunt of unemployment at about 23% of the entire female working population in Egypt. By comparison, just 5.2% of male labor force in the country is unemployed. These figures do not include Egyptians working abroad.
The rate of unemployment for men has steadily decreased from 6% to 5% from 2007 to 2009. In that same period, however, the number of unemployed women increased by approximately 5%. Such differences can be attributed to downsizing in the public sector and to the existence of gender bias in the private sector, according to Professor Naglaa El Ehwany, at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science of Cairo University. Professor El Ehwany is the deputy director and lead economist at The Egyptian Center for Economic Studies (ECES) located in Cairo. ECES is an independent, non-governmental think-tank which conducts research activities in collaboration with local and international experts with the goal of providing solutions to challenges facing the Egyptian economy.
“Women are not encouraged to work in the private sector for cultural issues and because of their family obligations,” El Ehwany said in an exclusive interview with this reporter. “And the private sector is reluctant to hire women because of these obligations,” she added.
There are misconceptions in Egypt where by hiring women is considered detrimental to financial efficiency and places additional legal responsibilities on the company. The Egyptian Labor Law 12/2003 guarantees women employees maternity leave and two breaks of half an hour, but counting them as working hours. By law in Egypt, “a woman can leave the workplace an hour early if she has a baby,” El Ehwany indicated. The Labor Law has several provisions aimed at employed women including up to ninety days of maternity leave and the establishment of nurseries in companies with more than 100 workers.
“There are many social and legal problems that affect women’s ability to get jobs,” said Hany Fawdry, program director with the Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance (EWLA) located in Giza. EWLA is a non-governmental organization (NGO) dedicated to increasing women’s knowledge of their constitutional rights. “The law discriminates a lot and gives more rights to men than to women. And, of course, there is the fact that women have additional obligations, like family,” he added.
“Women often do not have the time to work late. Organizations must provide places for their children, which they are unwilling to do most of the time. Of course, companies are mostly interested to employ men,” said Fawdry. “They can work until midnight. And women end up marginalized,” he explained.
According to Soha Abdelaty, the problem is also linked with the fact that “harassment against women in the workplace affects the position of women.” Abdelaty is deputy director at Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), a human rights NGO located in Cairo. Abdelaty also disclosed that companies are aware of the potential challenges and very often will not want to risk having women as employees.
Marwa Rushdy, program associate at The Education For Employment Foundation (EFE Foundation), lamented the bias against women in the private sector. EFE is an NGO located in Cairo and focused on labor training. It was established in 2008 with a sole purpose of reducing unemployment by training graduates and placing them in companies.“It is something that comes from the private sector mainly. Sometimes companies come and tell us that they specifically want men to fill their jobs,” Rushdy indicated.
El Ehwany indicated, however, that things are changing for the better. “Some businesses are more and more aware that women are more willing to prove themselves,” she said. “They are offering jobs and training. Five, six, seven years ago, they were not willing to embark in training courses, but now many have the initiative of training them on the job. This is mainly because the education system does not produce qualified graduates,” she explained.
She also indicated that there are no clear political agendas to solve this issue from either government or opposition. “The government undertook several reform measures to increase the level of competition and foreign investment but there is no interaction between macroeconomic policies and employment policies. In reality, I cannot see a comprehensive strategy from either power or opposition regarding employment,” she added.
