In several years the Caribbean city of Limón will have one of the world's most modern container ports, but due to financing issues there may be no road to get to it.
Soon after striking longshoremen reached a partial deal with the Atlantic Port Authority, JAPDEVA, to return to work Thursday, a court in Limón declared the strike illegal, rejecting the union’s appeal filed Monday.
More than 1,500 dockworkers affiliated with the union SINTRAJAP went on strike for 16 days, yet the Atlantic Port Authority's (JAPDEVA) board of directors on Wednesday voted to pay them full wages for their time away from the job. In response, the Libertarian Movement Party's top lawmaker, Otto Guevara, on Thursday filed a criminal complaint alleging embezzlement against JAPDEVA’s Executive President Anne McKinley and other top officials at the agency.
The deal negotiated puts striking workers from the SINTRAJAP union back on the job Thursday morning to avoid sanctions, including docked wages, for participation in the labor action, but does not resolve the dispute.
As the strike in Costa Rica's Caribbean port city of Limón stretched into its tenth day, importers and exporters are struggling to meet their obligations to customers, according to several sources consulted by The Tico Times. Despite the port remaining open, the ongoing strike has created an administrative backlog that has delayed some shipments by as much as 72 hours.
Authorities in Costa Rica have opened active criminal investigations to determine who organized the ongoing acts of violence and vandalism that began last week and continued through Monday during a dockworkers strike that briefly paralyzed the country's most important commercial port in the Caribbean province of Limón.
A solid majority of Limón residents say that a $1 billion APM Terminals port project will be a positive thing for the impoverished region, according to a survey from Borges y Asociados. The poll results came out soon before the government announced it would restart negotiations with striking dockworkers on Thursday morning.
LIMÓN – Costa Rica's Labor Minister Victor Morales announced that negotiations with the dockworkers union SINTRAJAP would be suspended until its leaders issued a public statement denouncing the burning of President Luis Guillermo Solís' image outside union headquarters in the Caribbean port of Limón on Monday. Negotiations were originally scheduled to continue at the Labor Ministry on Wednesday in San José.
A Tico Times reporter takes a stroll down Limón's main boulevard and asks local residents what they think about a proposed $1 billion Moín Port expansion project at the center of the ongoing controversy.
Both President Luis Guillermo Solís' administration and the Atlantic Port Authority union, SINTRAJAP, dug in their heels after negotiations at Casa Presidencial ended in an impasse Thursday.
Public Security Minister Celso Gamboa announced that police had removed striking stevedores from the docks in Moín and Limón, which handle 80 percent of Costa Rica’s international trade, Wednesday evening with the support of Casa Presidencial.
