THE REMAINS OF THE ATC

Héctor Mediavilla

ATC: Agence Transcongolaise des Communications. The 1997-2000 civil war stopped almost any commercial activity in Brazzaville - capital of the Congo Republic -. The so called ATC, the transportation state company –aviation, railway and navy – went bankrupt. Today, six years later, most of the workers of the ATC navy do not have any regular income. They get paid every five or six months for their current work in the restore of the ATC half sunken boats near the Brazzaville harbour in the Congo river. Some of them live with their families in the best preserved boats and try to survive growing vegetables in the river bank and doing small trade with Kinshasa. Without any help from the government, the ATC workers started to restore the fleete in 2000 with the hope of restarting the trading activity with the North of the country and thus, having a job again. Despite the fact that the ATC may be privatized these people do not have neither technical nor economic means to continue with their task with success.

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• A woman, who earns her living by trading small items from Kinshasa, stands on the deck of the boat where she lives. Former ATC workers' families live as squatters in the rusting ferry boats after the 1997-2000 civil war.

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• Clothes drying in a deck of one of the former boats of the ATC. Most of these boats have been squattered.

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• Portrait of the bureau's officer of CSTF and a friend in his humbly office. He is responsible for paying the workers.

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• An ATC worker and one of the members of the fleet restoration team.  

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• A worker who paints the unsunken boats of the ATC.

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• Un jeune homme qui habite sur un des bateaux ATC tient un gros joint de marijuana dans la main droite. Brazzaville, Congo.

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• A young man smokes a marijuana joint in a ATC boat deck where he lives.

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