Costa Rica information, activities and news
A contractor will be installing a drainage pipe in Calle Avión near the Intel Corp plant in Rivera de Heredia. The work will begin at 2 p.m. Saturday and last until 5 p.m. Sunday, said the Consejo Nacional de Vialidad.
The contractor, Constructora Presbere S.A. recommended a detour about a third of a mile west of the job site.
Merck Sharp & Dome, (MSD, the international developer, manufacturer and distributor of pharmaceuticals, in an effort to reduce costs has announced the decision to close its Costa Rica operation, putting 104 people of of work.
The company said it will be shutting down its Pavas plant by the end of 2009.
However, the company will continue to keep a presence in Costa Rica, maintaining its “Mercadeo y Ventas” (Marketing and Sales) division open, providing support for its products.
The production work in Costa Rica will be moved to other plants, though the company did not give specifics.
The closure is part of the company’s restructuring, closing down plants in various countries, including the United States.
Livia Cruz, manager of the MSD plant in Costa Rica, said the decision to close was not an easy one, for months the company has been looking at its organizational structure and the closure is part of the company’s strategy to stay competitive.
The company is expected to provide the employees an attractive financial package to ease the financial strain and will start packing up for its move beginning in the last quarter of the year.
The company stresses that the Costa Rica closure, as well as the other closures, is not due to the world economic crisis, but rather, a decision after three years of analysis and evaluation of the company’s operations.
Rifles and handguns let out a shrill wail and a shower of bright orange sparks as Costa Rican authorities took turns feeding more than two dozen of them into a power saw one December morning.
The event — which included gun-sawing by President Oscar Arias (a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize), the public security minister and the national police chief — was planned almost as a public lynching of guns, meant to remind the public of Arias’ campaign against the illicit international arms trade.
But the symbolism of weapons destruction might have done little to ease the palpable fear here.
Armed violence has surged recently, and the murder rate rose last year to 9.6 per 100,000 inhabitants, up from about eight the previous year, a nearly 20 percent increase. In downtown San Jose, the increase is even starker: In 2008, the murder rate was nearly 28 per 100,000 inhabitants, up from 18.5 the previous year, a 52 percent increase. Three out of five homicides in Costa Rica are committed with a firearm. (more…)
