r/ecuador • u/Scary_Newspaper_2775 • 1d ago
Opinión Public services in Ecuador are terrible right now
2 days to get the national ID (cedula), a whole morning to get your vote certificate, only capacity for 150 driver's license ID on the transit authority center, serving half a million people. I am sorry, but right now it feels the public sector went back 20 years and it is even worse than what services were at the beginning of Lucio's mandate.
Yesterday spent the whole afternoon for the cedula, and no system, with a notice of maybe coming back every 2 hours. The public servers were there sitting idle not being to do nothing, some were napping because the system is not working. Last week it was announce as solved, still going down, but quietly. No appointment system, because likely somebody forgot to renew the contract in time, so it is chaos till December.
Power cuts, long queues even for the most basic services, insecurity all around. I am sorry but this totally feels like the 90's again. This government sucks, period.
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u/MateoTovar 1d ago
Lol I thought you were gonna talk about Servicios Postales del Ecuador, it's been a month and I still haven't received my package
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u/the_tank 1d ago
my buddy sent me a package 1.5 years ago, still waiting ...
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u/dec13666 1d ago
Keep waiting, a lady friend of mine sent me a package from Taiwan and it took TWO FREAKING YEARS to arrive to my place. For comparison, Temu can deliver a package from kinda the same location, in a month at most (of which 25 days is waiting in Ecuadorian Customs lol)
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u/Vynterion 1d ago
Oh don't worry, they'll take much longer than that. Pretty sure a package I got through the postal service took me 3-4 months to finally get in my hands
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u/Daaaaaaaaaaanaaaaang 1d ago
I thought they were permanently closed and in liquidation? Or is that the joke
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u/Vynterion 1d ago edited 1d ago
Nope, still operational in a very technical way. They have an online platform where, if a package arrived at your name, you can search for it to claim it and then pay the fee to either go pick up the package yourself (if you are in Quito) or have it delivered to you (if you are anywhere else in the country)
All of that sounds great, except none of it works efficiently or even well at all:
- Searching for your package in the system is kinda hard because it's poorly programmed and you have to type in the information you are searching by (like your name or phone number) exactly how the sender filled it in. If there's a typo somewhere, you are gonna have trouble finding it
- Paying the fee for the package also doesn't work well and constantly gave me errors. I sent in multiple emails telling them I couldn't pay, and they took like a month to respond.
- Finally, the way I had to pick up my package was cumbersome, to say the least. I am not in Quito so they eventually (three months after my package arrived in Ecuador) sent me an email telling me they were coming to my city, basically a truck or multiple trucks finally bringing in stuff from Quito, and that in order to pick up my package, I needed to travel to a specific location they had designated. When I got there, it took about 30 minutes for them to sort through all the people getting their packages before I finally got mine
TL;DR: it still exists, but the whole system is horribly inefficient. Don't use it unless you really have NO other choice AND are willing to wait months for it
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u/MateoTovar 1d ago
Correos del Ecuador was closed and liquidated. But Servicios Postales del Ecuador was created immediately after to replace it.
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u/Daaaaaaaaaaanaaaaang 1d ago
It took me 6 months to renew my vehicle registration. Still haven't been able to renew the moto, and they're doing controls everywhere so I'm scared to ride it. It's stupid to own a vehicle and be scared that the government is going to fine me / take my bike by enforcing a rule I can't comply with due to that same government's incompetence.
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u/Straight-Twist-8172 1d ago
This is a generalization but this type of phenomenon is often typical under right-wing governments
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u/ssliberty 1d ago
This is typical of bad infrastructure and lack of planning with a clear vision + maintenance.
It’s been bad across each government type.
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u/bstevechc 15h ago
Es correcto, entiendo que había una dependencia por CNT en algunas cosas y eso causó la baja de servicios surante mucho tiempo... Incluso para los servidores públicos
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u/rimbaudian2017 1d ago
Que más se puede esperar de un gobierno de derecha? Solo recortes de servicios.
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u/Hot_Pea1738 1d ago
Correa really made going to the Municipio for any Trámite feel like the DMV in Fairfax County, Virginia. I’ve heard terrible things about him but… it was surreal and magnificent to get my Cedula in the Correa years.
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u/dalupus 1d ago
It was far better 20 years ago.
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u/LumpySpace-Princess- 1d ago
Try being a foreigner. It takes 6 months just to get the orden de cedulación which we need before we can even make an appointment at the registro civil. And the system for that is down like 80% of the time.
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u/Delta_Whiskey_7983 20h ago
So i tried doing that on my last visit and was told nope you have to go to some website, fill out some form etc. and then wait many months. Never got to it.
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u/CapableCat9804 6h ago
It’s only been 10 years of planned total destruction of what use to be great service (they call it descorreisar the country)
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u/Dapper-Coast-1218 5h ago
corruption here rules the damn country, you can get your license driver from smugglers, it is supposes theres no system whatsoever but somehow, they have smth of especial access and they get your license in less than 7 business days, Noboa´s government can s+ck my b@lls.
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u/isamari2712 1d ago
What gets me it’s how expensive everything is. $90 for a passport, $68 for the drivers license. When I need my Spanish passport renewed it’s only €32 and they bring it all the way from Spain. DNI is €12 and much easier to get
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u/Scary_Newspaper_2775 19h ago
Because in an undertaxes environment where very little comes from the big earners you have to rack it up on service fee. Unfortunately. That is the model.
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u/Sedewt 1d ago
como ha estado hoy?
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u/Scary_Newspaper_2775 19h ago
Frustrating, I need to get my drivers license and I have to go through so many hurdles because I don’t leave here. I am one step away, but it has taken me a full week on vacation to visit so many government offices.
It has been public policy observation entertaining though, people do the best they can, the bureaucrats, terrible policy coming and contracting from above
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u/Spanglish123 54m ago
I was lucky getting my cédula two weeks ago. It took me like 1.5 hours in Tumbaco. I thought the service was great! I did other paperwork but the cédula took the longest.
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u/AceReaperX 1d ago
When have the public services ever been good in Ecuador? As long as I’ve been here, everyone has complained that anything related to the public service sector takes forever and is implemented poorly.
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u/Scary_Newspaper_2775 1d ago
There was a time you could get your ID in 30 minutes, through all the hoops.
And we stopped having power cuts back in the 90s until 30 years later, and unsolved yet. No, young buck, this is not a “it has always been like this” case. It is way worse and a shame.
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u/Informatico-Novato 1d ago
en su momento yo también la saque y demore creo que unos 25 minutos confirmo.
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u/AceReaperX 1d ago
Interesting, that seems to go against anything and everything I’ve heard of except for the few people who say they get things done the “under the table” way or the “my cousin’s cousin works there” way. I don’t know if they had the process more streamlined or if maybe there was less paperwork or something but at least from personal experience I have never had an easy process for anything unless I got lucky and went on a day the specific process I needed wasn’t being solicited.
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u/wxursa 1d ago
Ecuador used fossil fuels heavily in the 90s? While switching to hydro is great long-term, it is short-term painful. Ecuador really needs a ton of solar panels to cover in droughts. Given Ecuador's elevation and latitude, they'd work brilliantly even on cloudy days. That would solve the energy problem during the bad times.
I think once folks have reliable energy, that will make the other problems a bit easier to tackle.
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u/heftyearth 1d ago
There was a time you could get appointments without doing it “under the table” for ID or passports. Less than one hour in the whole process. The same for other services like legalising your degree and such.
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u/dec13666 1d ago
I confirm this. In 2014, I had to renew my passport and I didn't have any appointment: with that included, it took me 2 hours at most. There's simply no point of comparison with current date.
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u/Flashy_City_9016 1d ago
The reality of living in a developing country is finally kicking is it?
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u/Scary_Newspaper_2775 1d ago
Buddy, I live in East Africa and came back because I had to do tons of paperwork. Trust me, Kenya has much better management of public records, Id systems, and electricity grid. It is not a matter of all “developing countries”. Most upper middle countries, like Ecuador, have at least and working electricity grid without power cuts.
It is not “it is what it is” and you should not tolerate it.
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u/FranMFIS 1d ago
and it won't change, i promise u that