by Rod Hughes
Finally, after weeks of bad news about government agencies, Costa Rica’s leading daily La Nación reported the positive news today that the nation’s Social Security Administration (known universally as the Caja) is not only on top of its collections but has managed to recoup around $108,000 in late employers’ payments in the past three years.
Time was when the Caja was lax and thousands of contributing employers were behind, many times never paying because their companies eventually went broke. But the Caja has institituted a call center, where nine operators make an average of 8,000 calls per month. Result: 5,000 emplyers have brought their payments up to date in the last three years.
Caja collection director Luis Diego Calderón says the most effective method is calling before new debts get old, avoiding the mounting up of a large debt difficult for the company to pay and for the Caja to collect.”I don’t know of any social security institution that has this kind of call center. In our case, this (is part of) a strategic plan. We feel that we were getting to the debtors too late.”
Income to the Caja is important, because all public hospitals and clinics are run by this agency and they must pay doctors and nurses, as well as employees all the way down to maintenance staff.
The Caja has legal tools at hand, including the power to ask the courts to close a business for debts. But often extreme measures simply mean that the debtors cannot pay. The best way, according to Calderón. Currently, there are 17,911 private employers behind in their payments, but a tougher proposition is the biggest debtor of all–the various agencies and ministries of the government that the Caja can hardly close, according to the paper.

By Blake Schmidt
Tico Times Staff | bschmidt@ti…

The Secretary General of the National Unity Party (PUN) was shot three times Tuesday afternoon, once in the head, at his law firm in the southern San José suburb of Zapote in an attack authorities are saying looks like a hit.

Hernán Zamora, who was Housing Vice-Minister during the presidency of Miguel Ángel Rodríguez (1998-2002), was at work when three men who had scheduled an appointment with him entered his office and opened fire, nailing him first in the arm, then in the ear and finally in the shoulder. Zamora was hauled off by emergency responders to nearby Calderon Guardia Hospital, where authorities said he is in stable condition.

“It was really a miracle,” PUN legislator José Echandi commented to The Tico Times on Zamora’s survival.

After the suspects opened fire, another partner in Zamora’s firm pulled out a weapon and fired back at the three suspects, piercing one of them in the knee. The two other suspects escaped and took off in two cars. A fourth suspect had been waiting in one of these cars during the shooting. Police detained the injured suspect, whose last name is Ramírez and who has a criminal history.

“The suspects didn’t come to assault or rob, the idea was to kill,” said Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ) Assistant Director Francisco Segura in a press conference Wednesday morning.

He said judging by the fact that the crime appeared to be premeditated and organized, and by how quickly it occurred, it appears to have been a gun-for-hire-style crime. However, Segura said authorities are still investigating whether or not the suspects were paid and trying to find a motive.

Though authorities wouldn’t confirm it, Echandi told The Tico Times that 22-year-old Ramírez told authorities he was paid to do the job. Ramírez has been arrested as many as 16 times for charges including robbery, according to Segura.

The day before the shooting, a person police believe to have been one of the suspects called to make a 4 p.m. appointment with Zamora. The suspects showed up at the office at 4:40 p.m.

U.S. travelers to Costa Rica now have a wider selection of flights thanks to two airlines, Frontier and Spirit, recently creating new routes here.

Frontier Airlines has announced it will begin flying from the U.S. city of Denver, Colorado, to Costa Rica four times a week beginning Nov. 30.

The flights from Denver to Juan Santamaría International Airport, just northwest of San José, and from this airport back to Denver will be offered Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, according to the airline’s Web site. Introductory fares begin at $149 each way, not including taxes and fees.

The airline is also offering connecting flights to Denver from U.S. cities including Austin, Chicago, Dallas, Nashville, San Diego and Salt Lake City.

Additionally, Civil Aviation has given the go ahead to Spirit Airlines to open a route between the U.S. city of Los Angeles and San José, according to a statement from the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT).

This was the final step necessary for this budget airline to begin flying here three times a week. It has yet to announce the date it plans to launch this new route, reported the wire service ACAN-EFE.

Spirit began flying to Costa Rica from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at the end of April, and the success of this flight peaked its interest in opening more routes here, the statement said.

Tourism Minister Carlos Benavides said he is pleased with this new flight, which jives with the ministry’s “open skies” policy it has been pushing since the beginning of this year to bring more flights to Costa Rica.

-Tico Times