by Rod Hughes

Negociations began the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and then the Legislative Assembly talked on and on and finally it went to a referendum and won a majority vote. Now, let the negociations begin…

These talks are between the government and a disgruntled Citizen Action Party (PAC in its Spanish acronym) who opposed the trade pact and whose 17-member congressional delegation have vowed to block the 13 bills that must refom Costa Rican laws to bring them into accord with CAFTA’s provisions.

But at least both sides are agreed about speaking to one another. PAC floor leader Elizabeth Fonseca and party president Otton Solis are agreed with Presidency Minister Rodrigo Arias, President Oscar Arias’s brother and chief advisor.

But one should not think that Solis has softened. He said he was going along so that he might “present some bills to mitigate the negative effects of CAFTA.” Among his proposals will be subsidies for small and meduim sized companies.

Meanwhile the tedious hand recount of the ballots is beginning in the offices of the Supreme Elections Tribunal. The work is expected to take at least two weeks.

by Rod Hughes

Prefabricated houses are supposed to go up in a hurry with less labor cost once the foundations are set. Right?

Tell that to the more than 11 families who a La Nacion report says are still waiting for their nice, new PrefaHogar of Costa Rica S.A. houses to be erected on their lots more than six months after ordering them. Nor are they all cheap homes and some families have paid up to 11 million colones (500 colones per dollar) as a down payment.

Monday some family members presented themselves in a group in the PrefaHogar offices to demand that their homes be built immediately or their downpayments refunded. In the worst cases, plans for the houses have not been delivered to their owners for approval or alterations.

At least the company has offices in which customers can complain. In the 1970s several scams resulted in customers filing legal papers only to be told that the prefab company office had mysteriously disappeared, right down to the sign out front.

In this case, at least, the company has a spokesman, general manager Carlos Maria Jimenez, who told La Nacion that the company was experiencing “organizational difficulties,” namely, that they do not have an engineer to supervise construction. The customers live in the San Jose area, Guanacaste and Puntarenas.