Companies and workers change their routines, schedules and even their clothes to avoid robberies and extortion

The drone gives them the first insight into the sector in which they will make deliveries, delivery people no longer wear uniforms, working hours have been changed, and routes have been reduced. This is how some companies are working to deal with the insecurity facing the country, and there are even manufacturing sectors, with their entire value chain, that claim to support spending up to a million dollars a day in security measures.

In the industrial sector of Guayaquil, staff arrive at the doors of their businesses dressed in civilian clothes, changing into uniforms inside. Clothing items that identify them as workers in a certain industry are no longer used, for example, by those who are in charge of leaving products at certain points of sale, such as neighborhood stores, and they do this as a preventive measure in order not to identify extortionists. .

Uncertainty is taking its toll on businesses and industries that are cutting back hours to care for their employees but predicting losses

“Uncertainty affects the company’s operations mainly because most of our sales points are neighborhood stores that suffer a lot from the problem of vaccinations and extortion. We already have routes that our delivery trucks cannot reach, not only in Guayaquil, but in many provinces, Esmeraldas, Santo Domingo, Los Ríos, we have stopped delivering to certain sales points because of insecurity,” said the manager. Human Company resources in the beverage sector.

In the case of that company, it has eliminated the use of uniforms for its salespeople who travel around town. In addition, they reduced “certain long-distance sales routes to keep people off the streets at night.” They have a strict evacuation and alert protocol, and if something does happen, they try to keep most people inside home office, “The fewer people we have in our facilities, the better,” he emphasized.

While from the food sector, trucks from another industry that distributes products across the country leave with greater scrutiny. “We also work with drones”, before entering the places this technological device allows them to know what is happening in the place, comments the head of the company’s security.

Hours and routes are adapted to crime

For Miguel Ángel González, president of the Ecuadorian Business Committee (CEE), these measures are taken to protect people’s safety as a core value, also in certain cases adjusting work schedules and promoting remote work. “The business priority is to guarantee operational continuity and contribute to joint efforts to overcome this challenging situation,” said the leader.

Companies have also decided to expand or supplement benefits that already apply to their workers, but with stricter security protocols, such as the routes of their express trains. “We have always had an express for workers, 100% coverage of the company, this is not some new measure. What we have done is to extend those fast routes”, revealed the person in charge of personnel of one company.

‘Self-fencing’ due to insecurity taking its toll on food establishments, also collateral victims of criminal violence and crime in Guayaquil

He explained that the express trains used to travel through different parts of the city and had different stops already established, but now in very dangerous areas such as Durán, El Guasmo, Entrada de la 8, they go door to door in the homes of workers to prevent robberies and extortion .

Taking these measures and vigilance have become common in companies, especially those located along the road to Daule, in the sector where the Primorsko Penitentiary is located. Last Monday, for example, there was a protest by motorcyclists who refused to transfer the leader of Choneros, alias Fit, from that prison in La Roca and demanded his return.

The situation also affects other production branches, such as the export sector. Felipe Ribadeneira, executive president of the Ecuadorian Federation of Exporters (Fedexpor), assures that insurance costs have skyrocketed in companies that want to protect themselves from risks and damages arising from uncertainty, not counting the resources they allocate to solve legal issues related to security, from hiring specialized legal advice to representation in legal proceedings.

“This concern is not foreign to the export sector, which, along with its value chain, faces the burden of investing millions of dollars a day in security measures as companies turn to surveillance, monitoring and data analysis technologies. to anticipate and respond to possible threats,” said Ribadeneira, who lamented that the impact of the problem is reflected in non-oil exports, which are struggling to grow while facing additional costs that competitors do not have to bear.

The export sector is formalizing a request for tax reform to the government to ease its security costs

For this, the presenter compared the performance of the export sector, which in the first half of the previous year recorded a growth of 1.8 billion dollars compared to 2021, while this year it reached barely 330 million dollars more than in 2022. Within this panorama, the agricultural sectors are particularly affected , fisheries and aquaculture, along with the slowdown in international consumption and internal challenges in the coastal area.

Ribadeneira announced that, given the situation, the sector will present a comprehensive security management model. “It is important that we work together to oppose this problem that affects all levels of our society, and especially threatens the export chain, which is key to the economic growth of our country, maintaining employment and dollarization,” he explained. owner of Fedexpor (I)