Public Works and Transport Minister Germán Valverde said that the delay will not affect the country's commercial sector, as the Atlantic Port Authority will continue offering import and export cargo mobilization services at its terminal.
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.
President Luis Guillermo Solís signed an executive order Tuesday establishing a committee to coordinate 75 development projects and initiatives ranging from sewers to job training for the country’s depressed Caribbean region. The president also named writer and intellectual Quince Duncan head of the Commission on Afro-Descendent Affairs during his weekly press conference at Casa Presidencial.
After years of lawsuits, court cases and a strike in October that paralyzed the ports in Limón, APM Terminals is finally set to start construction on its new $1 billion terminal in Moín in 2015, according to a statement issued Wednesday afternoon by the Environment Ministry.
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.
