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Our readers' opinions
Her daughter was clippedby excessive phone rate Dear A.M. Costa Rica; I read your column in Tuesday's edition about phone overpricing in CR with great interest. Last year, our daughter visited your beautiful country for the month of January, taking courses with our university. We did not hear from her for three weeks due to lack of phone service in the remote areas she was visiting. We comforted ourselves with the fact that she was with her professor and his wife as well as many fellow students, and if all was not well, we would have heard from them. But it was with great relief that we received a collect call from her late one evening. She had found a phone sitting on an office desk in the study area of Monteverde where they were staying and arranged a call home in Spanish. We only talked for about twenty minutes, but it was wonderful to hear her voice and hear of some of her adventures. When we opened our phone bill a few weeks later, we were shocked that we had been charged over $150 for that one call!! I contacted our local phone company and the Federal Communictions Commision to no avail. I called the customer service number on the bill, only to be told that these are "fixed" prices that cannot be adjusted. Finally, I decided to write a letter to this "BBG" expressing our shock and dismay that an American company could fleece its customers this way and threatening legal action against them. CC'ing our lawyer, the FCC, our Congressional representatives, the White House, and anyone else I could think of didn't hurt either. After three months of our refusing to pay their bill, they adjusted it significantly, so we ended up owing "only" about $45. Please advise your readers not to take this fleecing lightly. They have a voice and can protest and refuse to pay outrageous fees. Costa Rica really needs to modernize its phone service to make it more accessible and affordable to its tourists. Our daughter was given a calling card as part of her travel package that did not work anywhere until she returned to San José at the end of her trip. Not being able to contact loved ones, especially our young people, when they are traveling there is a source of much anguish at home. Surely in this day and age, something can be done about this. Notwithstanding the phone problem, our daughter enjoyed her experience immensely and loved your beautiful country! Anna Marie Bartling
Newark, Delaware U.S.A. Will tax department find competent personnel? Dear A.M. Costa Rica: The series on the pending tax plan has been very instructive but has (so far?) missed a very important point. The new law would call into being a force of "tax police" and a sprawling bureaucracy not likely to have either the competence or the integrity (such as it is) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. In the U.S., for example, the tax code (itself a book of more than a thousand pages) is supplemented by regulations more than four times the volume of the code itself. Just for example, who will write the rules about basis under the proposed new capital gains tax? Where will the new bureau find the personnel with the competence to review hundreds of thousands of tax returns, and on what criteria based on what experience will returns be selected for field audits? The Costa Rican bureaucracy is better known for its corruption than for its competence. Costa Rica is scored little better than halfway between the best and the worst countries for perceived corruption. What proportion of the field auditors do you think will be on the take? How can a government that cannot even enforce an end-user sales tax hope to police a multi-level value-added tax system? Bryant Smith
Playa Palo Seco Stop paying sky-high prices, Costa Rican reader asks Dear A.M. Costa Rica: In the short comment published in your newspaper Feb. 27 and titled "Tax plan irks agent who will spread word" I would like to tell Mr. O'Brian that as a citizen of Costa Rica I am glad he is not coming to invest in our precious country. Any foreign investor who does not like how we do business here should fly far away. In the case of Mar y Sombra and any other property build and encroached upon the maritime zone, it should and will come down. I do not care if you found Christ, Buddha, or any Greek god over there. Costa Ricans are tired of corruption and slimy business conducted not only by Costa Ricans but also by foreign people. We may be slow to catch up with those who broke the law, but little by little all criminal behavior will not be tolerated (Did you read about our three presidents under question?) Maybe, when you and all those "Mr. O'Brians" that most likely love to hear all the "tiquillos" calling him Mr. Gringo depart and stop paying stupid amounts of money for real estate here, we the middle class Costa Ricans will be able to afford a little piece of our own country. Maybe when we all start paying taxes the infrastructure of our country will improve. So, Mr. O'Brian and all others who think like him, please, if you do not want or will not pay taxes here, do not come, stay in your free-of-crime, free-of-corruption, and free-of-mistakes goverment "Dear Washington" selling real estate or, if you are here, please do us a favor: GO HOME or drive south. "Mucho ayuda el que poco estorba" Alonzo Guzman
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on our real estate page HERE! |
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Third news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, March 1, 2006, Vol. 6, No. 43 | ||||||
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| Flower Lady accidently finds herself as an art teacher |
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By Annette Carter
Special to A.M. Costa Rica Using the sea as her inspiration and Puerto Viejo de Talamanca as her canvas, German-born Sara Simon is sharing her love of the arts with the kids of this seaside village on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast in an art workshop that began serendipitously on her front porch. “One day I was on my front porch painting a typical Caribbean scene with palm trees, and the kids in the neighborhood began stopping by to ask what I was doing,” she said. “They wanted to make art, too, so I taught them how to draw palm trees, and after that they just kept coming back for more.” After they mastered palm trees, Ms. Simon taught the children to draw circles later adding numbers — a clock of sorts — to include an educational component to her teaching. From there, they used their knowledge of circles to create art-inspired crowns. There is no limit to the curiosity and creativity of the kids she teaches, Ms. Simon said. And art, she said, is a great way to teach kids other lessons about life. “What I teach them is discipline and to use their concentration when they do something. I teach them to have respect for the other kids and to share things, and I’ve also had to teach them to be 'tranquilo.'" She does this by lighting incense and encouraging them to work quietly. “The kids always show up at my door — sometimes at six at night. Yesterday eight kids were at my gate. But when the kids start screaming, I send them home,” she said with a laugh. Ms. Simon is no stranger to the world of the arts. Born in Germany — her mother is from Trinidad and her father from London — she has been onstage since the age of 14 as a singer, actor and model. She also paints, writes and designs fashions. At age 17 she began traveling “to inspire my brain and learn to be more open-minded.” Her current travels brought her to the Caribbean from Costa Rica’s Pacific side and before that Panamá, Mexico, California and New York City. In each of her destinations, she has made her mark. On the Pacific side she designed fashions for the Ticas and choreographed her creations into a fashion show at a local shopping center. “I am aways educating myself and I change myself day-by-day,” she said. “I do things just to make me smile.” That philosophy inspired her to design crepe paper flowers with natural stems which are now seen in |
 A.M. Costa Rica/Annette
Carter
Sara Simon and three of her students pose among the
youngsters' worksmost of the bars and restaurants in Cahuita and Puerto Viejo and have earned her the nickname “the Flower Lady.” “It was my birthday in January, and I just created the flowers as a decoration for myself to wear in my hair,” she said. “Then people started asking for them.” Her most recent venture really got off the ground when a local fisherman working with the cruise ships came to her and asked for 200 flowers to sell to tourists. She created 150 for him and took the remaining 50 to Parquecito Restaurant in Puerto Viejo which bought 20 and became her first regular customer. Other businesses soon followed “I think I can go anywhere with this,” she says. “I only need paper and scissors!” For now though, Ms. Simon’s plan is to stay in Puerto Viejo at least three more months. Throughout her career and travels, Ms. Simon says that working with kids has always been in the back of her mind. “For me, it’s a pleasure to see their progression and to share my know how and education to make them smile.” |
| Four-day work week again rejected by legislators |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Lawmakers again have rejected the four-day work week and a proposal to allow employers to require longer hours on the job during peak periods without paying overtime. The Comisión Permanente de Asuntos Sociales turned down both ideas Tuesday. Some employers, such as Intel Corp., have been seeking a four-day work week for years. They proposed to keep employees on the job 12 hours a day for four days and then provide a three-day weekend. |
Costa Rica has a
48-hour work week in the Constitution. Employers still can keep workers on the job for 12 hours, but they have to pay overtime. The change in the law would have allowed 12-hour days without overtime as long as the total hours worked a week did not exceed 48. Under the plan for longer hours at peak times, employers would have been able to keep workers on the job for 10 hours a day in exchange for six-hour days at other times in the year. |
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on our real estate page HERE! |
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Fourth news page |
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| San José,
Costa Rica, Wednesday, March 1, 2006, Vol. 6, No. 43 |
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| City trying to round up the homeless and youngsters |
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By Saray Ramírez Vindas
of the A.M. Costa Rica staff San José officials conducted some 85 operations Tuesday to remove the homeless and the underage from the city streets. That was the word from Johnny Araya, the municipal mayor. He made his comments when he finished a
However, Araya was not saying much about that subject Tuesday. He did stress the need for better housing in the city to coincide with his repopulation plan. The streets of San José have been populated for years by the homeless and homeless children. Periodically, officials try to bring the youngsters to better |
 A.M. Costa Rica/Saray
Ramírez Vindas
The Rohrmoser home of president-elect Óscar Arias
Sánchez has become a tourist attraction. David Duyk of North
Carolina and Linda Ostbye of Minnesota posed Tuesday with Carlos
Amador of the Fuerza Pública.environments, but most run away and return to the streets, in part because many have a crack cocaine habit. |
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| Electronic U.S. passports to be standard at year's end |
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Special to A.M. Costa Rica
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The United States is issuing electronic passports as part of a pilot program for diplomatic passports, and plans to issue U.S. e-passports to the American public at all domestic passport agencies by the end of 2006, the State Department announced. According to the State Department media note on the new passports, the e-passport integrates the latest concepts in electronic document protection and readability and aims to facilitate international travel for U.S. citizens while enhancing border security. The State Department began limited production of the e-passport Dec. 30. Officials say the e-passport is the same as a traditional passport with the addition of a small integrated circuit or chip embedded in the back cover. The new passport combines face-recognition and chip technology. |
According to State
Department documents, the chip securely will store
the same data visually displayed on the photo page of the passport
(name, date of birth, gender, place of birth, dates of passport
issuance and expiration, passport number), and will also include a
digital photograph. The inclusion of the digital photograph will
enable biometric comparison, through the use of facial recognition
technology at international borders, officials say. "The information contained on the integrated circuit embedded in the passport will not provide a means to track U.S. citizens. This information will be used only in identity verification at ports of entry during travel," said Laura Tischler, State Department consular affairs spokeswoman. To prevent data written to the chip from being susceptible to unauthorized reading, Tischler said that shielding material has been incorporated in the passports front cover, which she said prevents the chip from being read when the passport is closed. |
| Press Association concerned by anti-newspaper march in
Nicaragua |
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Special to A.M. Costa Rica
MIAMI, Fla. — The Inter American Press Association has condemned the harassment against the La Prensa newspaper in Nicaragua and its journalists and called on authorities of that country to guarantee press freedom. Thursday some 250 supporters of Alvaro Chamorro Mora, mayor of the city of Granada, traveled to Managua, approximately 45 kilometers (28 miles) away, where for an hour they blocked the entranceway to La Prensa and demanded a meeting with the newspaper’s directors and that the paper stop publishing news from its correspondent on alleged irregularities in Grenada city hall. The chairman of the Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Gonzalo Marroquín, said that “although no violence was reported and we understand this could be an isolated event, we trust that officials will be alert to incidents that could be |
directed against the
press given the tense climate leading up to elections next November.” Directors of La Prensa complained to the press association about the harassment of reporters Arlen Cerda in Granada and Jose Garth in Siuna, in northeastern Nicaragua, because of their articles on alleged corruption of officials. The press association’s concern is also based on recent incidents against press freedom in Nicaragua. In 2004, Nicaraguan journalists, Carlos Guadamuz and María José Bravo, correspondent for La Prensa, were murdered. Marroquín, editor of the Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre, stressed, “The IAPA respects the right of citizens to express themselves freely within the law.” He said that the organization would monitor the situation of the media and journalists that will cover elections this year in Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, as well as Nicaragua. |
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