A weak to moderate El Niño is now likely, persisting into early next year, according to the latest United Nations forecast. The weather pattern periodically disrupts the Pacific area with consequences that can range from increased rainfall and floods in the United States and Peru to drought and brush fires in Australia.

But the UN World Meteorological Organization warned against trying to predict any possible impact at this early stage from the phenomenon, which is caused in part by a warming of the waters of the tropical Pacific and its effect on the trade winds.

“Climate patterns across the equatorial Pacific over the last one to two months have developed a notable tendency toward El Niño conditions,” the meteorological agency said in its update bulletin, although it cautioned that at this stage there is a small possibility that it might not materialize.

“However, it may be noted that El Niño conditions, once established at this time of the year, almost always persist until early the following year,” the agency added.

It called for additional caution, in view of the evolving situation, in forecasting the impact in those regions typically affected by El Niño, with the situation expected to become clearer in the next month or two.

It noted that although sea-surface temperatures are not yet at uniformly warm levels typical of El Niño across the whole central and eastern equatorial Pacific, conditions in the eastern equatorial Pacific close to the South American coast became warm toward the end of July.

During August, oceanic and atmospheric patterns in the central and western equatorial Pacific also began to resemble conditions typical of an early stage of El Niño. In the central equatorial Pacific, surface temperatures became more than one degree Celsius warmer than normal, while at the same time there was a weakening of the trade winds.

It is very likely that sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific will in general be warmer than normal through the remainder of the year and into early 2007, the bulletin said.

“The development of a basin-wide El Niño event is considered likely based on expert interpretation of the prevailing situation and the general consistency of forecast models,” it added.

A Costa Rican business owner yesterday took possession of a 150-square-meter lot he recently purchased that is part of the San José Municipality building. Guillermo Sanabria told journalists he is the “new owner” of the lot, which is part of the municipality’s parking lot. He plans to build a new office building on the space.

Sanabria said he bought the lot a few weeks ago for $50,000 from a man identified by the last name Rigg after double-checking that the property was properly registered. The legal advisor to the San José municipality, Rafael Arias, said that because of an “administrative error” the lot was not in the municipality’s name and that the municipality plans to appeal Sanabria’s purchase. “The lot was purchased by the municipality,” Arias said. “We could be facing a fraudulent situation.”

-ACAN-EFE

By Blake Schmidt - Tico Times Staff

In the dark of night, the government sent hundreds of National Police to intervene early yesterday morning in a costly slow-motion port worker protest at the nation’s two biggest seaports.

Saying the protests had cost the government $5 million due to backed-up trucks and boats waiting to move cargo through the Caribbean port of Moín, Public Security Minister Fernando Berrocal announced yesterday at Casa Presidencial that 260 national police took over the port at 1:15 a.m., resulting in one arrest.

Workers at Moín and the nearby, smaller port of Limón had been protesting since Monday the government’s plan to privatize the management of the ports. Port employees had been employing tortuguismo, slowing down their productivity to a minimum.

Leroy Perez, spokesman for the Union of Caribbean Port Workers (SINTRAJAB), called the intervention “illegal” and “arbitrary,” and said the union would be meeting with other unions yesterday afternoon to consider strikes that could begin today.

There was also a police presence in the Limón port yesterday, though there were mixed reports as to when police intervened in that port and to what extent.

When asked by the Tico Times why the operation took place at night, Berrocal said the decision to intervene was made late Wednesday night at Casa Presidencial, when authorities felt the costly protest could not go on any longer.

“The port was totally paralyzed,” Berrocal said. He added that only one person, a forklift operator, resisted the intervention, and was arrested.

Perez decried the arrest of the forklift operator, Luis Gran.

“In no moment did he violate the law. (Security officials) said he was working too slow. He refused to work faster, and so they arrested him,” Perez told the Tico Times in a phone interview from Limón.

“That’s new to me. I thought police were supposed to regulate violence, not make people work,” Perez said, speaking while visiting Limón neighborhoods in a caravan trying to rile up support for a protest.

Police presence continued through the day at the ports and throughout Limón yesterday. Berrocal said this presence would be maintained as needed.

“We’ve been able (to police the ports) so far, and we will be able to (continue)… I hope,” he said.

The Ministry of the Presidency, Rodrigo Arias, called the intervention “peaceful.”

“The port is operating completely normally as of today,” Arias said.

The clash between workers and the government comes more than a month after the central Pacific port of Caldera privatized its management (TT, Aug. 8), laying off hundreds of government workers, and after the Arias administration announced privatization plans at the Caribbean ports.

Pérez said the union opposes such privatization. According to the union representative, SINTRAJAB submitted its own plan to modernize the Caribbean ports which would not entail privatization.

However, as was made apparent by the late-night intervention, the government is not willing to budge. At yesterday’s press conference, Inter-Institutional Coordination Minister Marco Vargas said the government will hold firm in its plans to concession out the administration of the ports as part of a Limón development project under way since the previous administration. Arias echoed Vargas’ position, calling JAPDEVA’s demand not to privatize the Atlantic ports “unacceptable.”

The protest drew fire all week from the administration and the Union of Private-Sector Chambers and Associations (UCCAEP), which represents 41 private business chambers. UCCAEP called Wednesday for the government to “immediately intervene,” and decried “millions” in losses for exporters, particularly those whose products include perishable fruit and vegetables, due to the protests.

“The harmful practices not only affect businesses by delaying exports… but it also puts the labor security of thousands of Costa Ricans who work in the private sector at risk,” said UCCAEP president Rafael Carrillo.

Vargas said he hopes the ports can be privatized within four years. He explained that most workers would be given severance pay, and 30% of them could get retirement benefits. According to Vargas, layoffs could be mitigated by the “ Limón Port City ” project, a $70 million undertaking with funding from the World Bank and the government of Japan, designed to renovate the city.

He said the project could create thousands of jobs in the long term.

Consolation Prize

The workers were also protesting that the government has not yet paid workers $860,000 in extra pay as agreed upon in a recent collective convention. This week’s port slowdown sent the administration scrambling to give union workers the extra pay, settling the three-year-long struggle between port employees and the government.

Despite union requests for labor benefits to be covered by tariffs, the Public Services Regulatory Authority (ARESEP) didn’t include the payments in its 2003 tariff expenditures, which set off a bitter battle between the union and the government, according to ARESEP spokeswoman Carolina Mora.

The government decided to pluck funds from the massive budget surplus of the Atlantic Port Authority (JAPDEVA), which JAPDEVA officials say is locked in a bureaucratic bungle.

However, ARESEP said in a statement Monday that JAPDEVA can decide on its own how to spend its $19.3 million budget surplus.

JAPDEVA has accrued the surplus from tariffs on goods coming through the ports during the past 10 years. This amount now represents nearly half of the institution’s annual budget.

“By law, a public institution can’t have profits… It’s the JAPDEVA administration’s fault (that such a surplus exists). An institution can’t continue to gain a surplus that they don’t reinvest,” said Mora.

Mora said that due to the growing surplus, ARESEP is looking into the possibility of reducing tariffs on goods at the Caribbean ports.

However, JAPDEVA spokesman Israel Ocontrillo said JAPDEVA has been trying to reinvest its surpluses, but that those plans are often steeped in bureaucratic limbo.

“We have to request permission to reinvest. It’s very bureaucratic to work here,” Ocontrillo told The Tico Times, adding that to use the funds, JAPDEVA’s expenditures must be approved by the Comptroller General’s Office as well as the Federal Budget Authority.

Ocontrillo said JAPDEVA expected to have paid the workers by today.

By Katherine Stanley, Tico Times Staff

Foreigners in line at Immigration swap stories about the problem-ridden bureaucracy as if they were war tales. The man who started shaking in fury after losing his long-awaited appointment with officials because he was twice directed to the wrong hour-long line. The people whose papers were lost altogether in the mass of 600,000 manila files shelved throughout the complex. And, lately, 10-month waits for new residency permits, forcing foreigners here to attempt bank transactions, travel and all other aspects of their daily lives without up-to-date papers.

In the spacious, air-conditioned office above this chaos, Immigration Director Mario Zamora isn’t making any denials. At 37, he’s charged with improving one of the country’s most infamously inefficient bureaucracies, and he freely admits the organization he’s headed since May has treated its clients poorly for years. He calls shoddy service for foreigners a serious problem that hasn’t received enough attention.

According to Zamora, changes for the Foreigner Services Section, which handles requests for temporary and permanent residency, among other processes, are on the way, perhaps as soon as December. Eleven staff members are working to put the file system in order, and a regulatory change will allow residents to make appointments for residency renewals six months in advance of their expiration date.

A special Immigration office will soon open at Juan Santamaría International Airport, west of San José, to handle travelers’ complaints and questions, and next year, the organization will begin computerizing Immigration’s files, Zamora says.

That may provide little comfort for foreigners such as Julián Arias, 56, a 40-year resident who waited in line for two and a half hours Tuesday at Immigration headquarters west of San José. Like the hundreds of others standing in the sun, Arias waiting in line not to renew his residency, but rather to obtain an appointment to renew his residency – an appointment that, because of administrative backup, is scheduled for July 2007.

Arias, who hails from Rivas, Nicaragua, and is now a farmer in the Caribbean-slope town of Guápiles, cheerfully told The Tico Times he’s used to the process, having renewed his cédula, or identity card, 36 times. However, after reaching the customer service window and being handed a slip of paper with his appointment date, he counted out all 10 months on his fingers and displayed a less forgiving attitude.

In the Stacks: Immigration’s 600,000 foreign resident files consist of paper documents stacked on shelves, desks and even the floor. Mónica Quesada | Tico Times

“It’s the worst,” said the Immigration veteran. “Before, you’d just come and they’d give it to you right there.”

Should foreigners be worried about carrying expired permits and not being able to get in appointment for months?

According to Zamora, who said the increased delays are simply the result of years of backup, Immigration officials will accept the computer printout showing a renewal appointment date, and won’t deport anyone whose cédula has expired but is waiting for renewal – though he said deporting such people is theoretically possible under the law, and is up to the discretion of the director. Officials Zamora doesn’t oversee may not recognize the printout, he admitted.

A longtime resident who asked that her name be withheld visited Immigration in August, a few days before her cédula expired. She was given an appointment nine months away. When she visited her bank to withdraw funds shortly thereafter, bank employees did not accept her computer printout as evidence of legal status. She wasn’t able to complete the transaction until she returned with her U.S. passport and met with the bank manager.

Reduced admission to national parks or fares on national airlines, perks that legal residents, as taxpayers, enjoy, will depend on whether the person behind the counter is aware of the delay, Zamora said.

Another potential problem: non-residents are sometimes asked to show an airline ticket out of Costa Rica before they can board a Costa Rica-bound plane. Unless airline officials accept the printout as evidence of residency, residents may be forced to buy tickets back to their countries of residence (partially refundable once you reach Costa Rica ).

Zamora and the Immigration Police did not return Tico Times phone calls by press time to explain why residents have to make their renewal appointments in person.

Overwhelmed, Overlooked

According to Zamora, previous Immigration heads and most media organizations have forgotten about the problems facing foreigners at Immigration, focusing instead on the plight of Costa Ricans. (For nationals, getting a passport requires waiting months for an appointment, or camping out in the predawn hours outside Immigration, some with sleeping bags and thermoses of coffee, and many illegally selling spots in line to those with money to spare.)

Costa Rican attorney Randall Zamora (no relation to Mario Zamora) recently added his tale of disorganization and lack of respect in the Foreigner Services Section to the mix: according to the lawyer, three of his clients were told their application documents had been lost and they would have to return to their countries of origin to begin the whole process again.

The lawyer visited Immigration earlier this month with a group of clients hailing from Germany, Israel and the United States, all of whom had turned in the required paperwork obtained in their home countries, such as birth certificates and police background checks. When officials looked for his clients’ paperwork, attorney Zamora told The Tico Times, he saw them open a file with one name on it, only to find paperwork for a different person inside, and open another file to find several people’s papers mixed together.

Eventually, he was told his clients’ papers had all been lost and that they would have to return to their home countries to get new copies, “as if it was just from here to the corner.”

To top it off, the officials who attended to his clients were highly disrespectful, the lawyer added.

Those who go to Immigration should “take a suitcase not full of money, but full of patience, because these people don’t have any culture of client service,” he said. “They treated (my clients) like criminals.”

The lawyer advised people dealing with Immigration to obtain a certified copy of all paperwork before submitting it to Immigration; apparently, that’s all that kept some of Zamora’s clients from having to book flights to other continents. People should also ask for all information from Immigration in writing. Non-Spanish speakers should take a bilingual person to deal with clerks and help with the process, he said.

Asked about these complaints, Director Mario Zamora said Immigration’s personnel are overworked, and that “high-stress situations” can result. Regarding what foreigners should do to deal with the system until changes come about, he reiterated that people should always make copies of any paperwork they give Immigration and ask officials to stamp their copies “Recibido” so they have proof the documents were submitted.

Users of any of Costa Rica’s public services should make this a habit, he added.

Another of Immigration’s problems: centralization. Zamora said one plan under way to improve service to Costa Ricans and foreigners alike is the opening of five regional offices so people don’t have to travel to San José to complete their paperwork.

For now, all roads lead to La Uruca, and within Immigration, Zamora himself – whose office, in keeping with the theme of waiting, is reached after sitting in not one, but two virtually identical, consecutive waiting rooms – is required to sign off on a surprising number of transactions.

At Juan Santamaría International Airport in Alajuela, northwest of San José, travelers entering the country Sept. 17 were held in the waiting area because the computers at the Immigration posts went down. Officials told travelers there was no contingency plan for this unprecedented occurrence, and that unless Zamora himself authorized an alternative course of action, officials would keep the visitors there as long as it took the system to come back up. (It did so in an hour.)

‘A Small, 360-Degree Turn’

Still, Zamora, who has degrees in law and political science and experience working in the Public Security Ministry and Ombudsman’s Office, seems confident he’ll make a difference, backed by a President who wants a more accommodating, user-friendly national immigration policy.

Zamora said his focus on improving services for Costa Ricans and foreigners alike is part of President Oscar Arias’ goal of making the country a better place to visit, live and invest. The administration’s efforts to reduce the impact of the hard-line Immigration Law passed during the previous administration, which took effect last month, constitutes “a small, 360-degree turn,” he said.

Zamora has said the government doesn’t have the funds or personnel to implement the law, and is working on a set of reforms to incorporate concerns the Catholic Church, human-rights groups and other organizations raised when the bill was discussed and approved in the last legislative term (2002-2006).

In the meantime, to minimize the law’s impact, the Executive Branch is working on a reglamento for the new law – a set of rules that determines how the law will be enforced – and plans to implement it gradually as it works on the reforms (TT, Sept. 8).

The law imposes and increases fines for those who house or employ illegal immigrants and gives Immigration Police greater freedom.

For more information on Immigration’s requirements and recent changes (in Spanish), visit migracion.go.cr.