Protest in Bocas Has Food And Fuel Supplies Cut Off? WTF?

Authored by: ild on Tuesday, August 24 2010 @ 11:21 AM COT

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Authored by: sophie on Tuesday, August 24 2010 @ 11:28 AM COT

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Authored by: lynnie on Tuesday, August 24 2010 @ 12:51 PM COT

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Authored by: susangg on Tuesday, August 24 2010 @ 03:04 PM COT

About 10 days ago, police showed up at the doors of the two companies who provide transportation between Almirante and Isla Colon (which is how a substantial number of the people who work on the island get to work) and barricaded their doors and locked up their boats. They claim they did it for "safety reasons," but that's a bunch of crap.

Yesterday AM. TVN-2 ran a fairly long interview with Rolando Robinson, owner of the larger of the two water taxi companies that have been shut down for the past 10 days, in which Robinson says that he is yet to be served with any written order re the shutdown and does not know why the service was shut down. He was supposedly going to court this morning to try to get an order allowing the company to reopen business. The reporter asked him if it was possible that he was being shut down because of an "accident" and he said that Taxi 25 has operated for years without any accidents.

In response, the director of Maritimo, a Mr. Linares (I do not know if he is any relation to Mrs. Martinelli, though he has the same last name) accused Robinson's company of being involved in a late night accident the day after New Years' that killed 4 people and gave this as the primary "safety" reason for shutting down Robinson's company. The only problem with that is that the company that owned the taxi that had the accident was NOT Taxi 25. (Oops...)
Could it be that the "accident" that triggered the shutdown was accidentally belonging to the wrong political party? (Robinson's brother is PRD Representante Benicio Robinson).

Interestingly, the government shut down Taxi 25 earlier this year shortly before Carnaval, supposedly for some kind of tax arrearage. And now, its almost time for the Feria del Mar.

Anyway, a lot of the workers in Bocas Town and the other islands live in Almirante and Changuinola and they can't get to work. So they're blocking the ferry from docking and blocking the roads. They say that as soon as the water taxi companies were shut down, the ferry upped their prices for passengers and the workers can't afford it. For the last three days, a crowd of protestors have prevented the ferry from landing, although I am told (but have not confirmed) that today, the protestors did allow the ferry to offload diesel fuel so that power to the island would not be interrupted, but did not allow other vehicles to be offloaded.

I was in town shopping today and there was plenty of food in the stores. Vendors were sending their own boats to Almirante and offloading their supplies there from the trucks that normally come on the ferry.

Meanwhile, workers are scrambling to get to work and back, so there are all kinds of random boats out there taking passengers...and compared to the scheduled water taxis, which require all passengers to wear life jackets, have their boats regularly maintained, carry cell phones, and are licensed, the random boat drivers, many of them Indians in cayucos have no safety equipment, engines that could conk out at any time and often do, overload their boats, no lights, no cell phones, and mostly unlicensed, etc. Yup, that's really promoting "safety...."

Below are the links to the TVN-2 news stories re the interview with Robinson and Mr. Linares' statements in response.

Links:
http://www.tvn-2.com/noticias/noticia...news=37492

http://www.tvn-2.com/noticias/noticia...ria_news=\
Nacionales

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Authored by: Chantal on Wednesday, August 25 2010 @ 09:52 AM COT

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Authored by: DJo on Wednesday, August 25 2010 @ 03:27 PM COT

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