Head of One of the World’s Worst Phone Systems Has Found His Calling : Communications: The Venezuelan privatization effort poses nightmarish problems, but the American sees it as a great career opportunity.

CARACAS, Venezuela — The equipment is decrepit and outdated, the workers are threatening to strike and the public is screaming for his scalp.

So is Bruce Haddad sorry he took the helm of Venezuela’s national phone company?

Hardly.

“This is a rare, rare career opportunity to really be able to use all the skills you’ve developed over a lifetime . . . and be able to play an important role in the development of a country,” said Haddad, 38, president since January of Compania Anonima Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela, known as CANTV.

A year ago, Haddad was sitting in a comfortable Connecticut office as a vice president for GTE, the large telecommunications concern.

That was before a consortium led by GTE paid $1.88 billion for a 40% stake in one of the world’s worst phone systems.

Today, Haddad is at the center of one of Latin America’s most difficult privatization efforts. Owned by the Venezuelan government for nearly four decades, CANTV is plagued with enough problems to preoccupy Haddad for the next 40 years.

Only about a third of the system’s international calls are completed, while less than half of local calls connect on the first try. More than 18,000 of the country’s 31,000 public phones are broken, and about 15% of the main cables for carrying calls don’t work.

Corruption pervades the company, while Venezuelans wait as long as eight years for a new phone line.

Haddad is slowly addressing those problems. But perhaps the most significant challenge he faces is persuading the long-suffering Venezuelans to have patience.

They berate him at public gatherings for not producing immediate improvements. They decry the suggestion of increased phone bills.

Venezuelans now pay about 75 cents a month for basic phone service.

“This has probably been the single biggest area of surprise. The level of public expectation is extremely high--beyond reason,” Haddad said in an interview.

“We came in with major technical plans, but not very good communication plans,” he said. “I wish I had envisioned the level of expectations a little better.”

Haddad isn’t exactly a newcomer to Latin America or the phone business. In the mid-1980s, he spent two years working on GTE’s modernization of the Dominican Republic’s phone system. He has worked at GTE for 17 years.

But that doesn’t make it easy. Besides being a technical and financial guru, he must constantly absorb criticism from workers, politicians and the public.

Last month, the communications minister denounced plans for a small rate hike, despite having signed the contract that calls for it.

Opposition party politicians regularly attack the privatization, which is part of President Carlos Andres Perez’s free-market economic reform plan. Perez remains unpopular in the aftermath of a failed February coup attempt.

Other businesses, including a state-run airline, have been sold as the government seeks to shed inefficient, money-losing ventures.

On the streets, people seem bitter about the changes--and the lack of them. “People are really upset,” said Jair Blanco, a teacher. “We were told we would see improvements immediately, and all we’ve seen is rate increases.”

To mollify customers, CANTV places ads in newspapers to emphasize the positives of its plan and to urge patience. It has also run ads urging the public to squeal on equipment installers who demand bribes.

Meanwhile, the corporate culture of CANTV--with its typically Latino emphasis on bureaucracy and paperwork--is changing rapidly. The company’s management has been decentralized, giving more authority to front-line workers.

For the public, service hours have been extended to evenings and weekends, a big adjustment in the land of the siesta. For the first time, customers can pay by check.

Still, the company’s 20,000 workers seem in constant fear of layoffs. At least a few of CANTV’s 28 unions verge on a strike at any given time, demanding raises of up to 100%.

Haddad has vowed to improve working conditions for employees, saying he wants to attract the “best talents available in Venezuela.”

At news conferences, Haddad often appears uneasy--mostly because he must operate in a language, Spanish, that he hasn’t quite mastered.

He answers angry critics with a standard line: Years of neglect and under-investment have left the system in poor repair; Give me time, and this will be the best phone system in Latin America.

Under Haddad, CANTV plans to invest up to $700 million in each of the next eight years in improvements.

By the end of the year, CANTV plans to fix all 11,000 public phones in Caracas and add 5,000. It will also add 200,000 lines and a digital microwave network that will make long-distance calls easier to complete.

By the end of the decade, Haddad says, the country will have more than 4 million lines, up from 1.6 million now.

But with a national poverty rate of nearly 80% and such strong resistance to phone tariff hikes, how will CANTV succeed financially?

“Volume is going to be the key to our success,” Haddad said. “There are millions of calls that people want to make but can’t.”