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MEXICO CITY: The Mexican government faced off with the powerful Electrical Workers Union on Monday after announcing the closure of a state-run power company that serves more than one fifth of the country.
Federal police and metal barriers surrounded offices of Luz y Fuerza on a busy axis in Mexico City after thousands -- from among its 44,000 active workers and 22,000 retirees -- protested in the capital on Sunday.
The government said on Sunday it was closing down Luz y Fuerza, which supplies power to Mexico City and the surrounding region, because it wastes large amounts of electricity, after ordering hundreds of police officers to occupy its installations.
Meanwhile, authorities said the top lawyer for another state power company involved in the shutdown was shot to death on Monday by a masked gunman while taking her seven-year-old daughter to school in Cuernavaca in central Mexico. The child was wounded in the attack.
The woman, identified in news reports as Amelia Avila Vasquez, was the head of the legal department of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), which is taking over Luz y Fuerza's operations.
The motive for her killing was unclear, but the Morelos state attorney general's office said her family reported that she had received death threats.
Alfredo Elias Ayub, the commission's director, told a news conference that an investigation had been opened, but shed little light on the murder.
The shutdown came amid a fierce dispute between the government and Luz y Fuerza.
"It's a difficult decision, but (it's) indispensable for the sustainability of Mexico in the future," Finance Minister Agustin Carstens said of the shutdown on national television on Monday.
Luz y Fuerza had been losing around 30 per cent of electrical supplies due to defects in the system, at a cost of around 25,000 million pesos (1.9 billion dollars) per year, Carstens said on Televisa.
"In the short term there'll be a complicated transition period, but there's no doubt that in the medium term this will generate large benefits," Carstens told Televisa.
The Electrical Workers Union, which represents Luz y Fuerza, called on workers to reject a layoff package, which Carstens has said could cost up to 1.5 billion dollars.
Union leaders called for a sit-in in front of the Congress on Monday and a mass demonstration on Thursday.
The government last week refused to recognise the election of Martin Esparza as the union's secretary general due to accusations of fraud.
Union leaders, meanwhile, have rejected accusations that they will disrupt power services to more than 20 million people in central Mexico.
Their lawyers were working on ways to reverse the closure and maintain jobs, Esparza said on Monday.
Labour Minister Javier Lozano said on Sunday that workers who accepted a buyout within one month would receive around two and a half years' salary, while Carstens said some 10,000 employees could later be rehired.
Amid a deep recession set off by the worldwide economic crisis, Carstens said the company's poor services had affected competitiveness in the centre of the country, where business and residences experience an average 900 minutes of power cuts a year.
Between 2003 and 2008, Luz y Fuerza had income of some 17 billion dollars compared with costs of more than 32 billion dollars, according to official figures.
- AFP/so
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