Being the Switzerland of the Americas, could Costa Rica adopt the same trend in Europe where there does seem to be a growing trend for sex drive-ins, with the widespread belief that it gets prostitution off the streets and into a safer environment, with similar schemes in Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands.

One of the most unusual aspects of the Zurich brothel — which are being referred to as “sex boxes” in Swiss media — are the signs being used at the facility, which cater both to Switzerland’s multilingual society (four official languages) and perhaps an odd sense of humour.

Those looking to find the sex boxes will have to look for a discreet “red umbrella,” and follow those signs to a former industrial zone where the nine boxes appear. According to Meritall Mir of GlobalPost, the customers will then “drive up one at a time along a lane reminiscent of fast-food drive-thrus” between the hours of 7pm and 5am.

Other signs pointing the way to the sex boxes show a car with a woman standing next to it. It is not clear if male prostitutes will also be allowed at the site.

“Along the way, they’ll negotiate fees and services with one of up to 40 sex workers,” Mir continues. “Once an agreement is reached, they’ll join the prostitutes in a car-wash style box to complete the transaction.”

The prostitutes themselves use a ticketing machine to pay a “stand fee” for the brothel’s facilities. They pay this at a ticketing machine.

The customer and the prostitute then drive to a covered area where they complete the transaction. The poster on the wall behind is not an instructional sign but a reminder to use condom.

Could we see the same happening here in Costa Rica? Probably not.

In the first case, sex drive-ins in Costa Rica have been around for a long time. They are called “motels” and can be found in throughout the greater metropolitan area (from Cargato to Alajuela), with the some of the most famous located in San Francisco, in San José’s east side.

Closer to downtown is the “Eden”, a sprawling complex that looks more like a residential development from the street front than a sex drive in.

Second, prostitutes in Costa Rica do not have to work the streets, many bars and hotels allow ‘sex social workers’ to apply their trade. Street prostitutes in Costa Rica are mainly transvestites, lining the streets like Avenida 5 and Avenida 7 in Barrio Amon.

Thirdly, a large sector of customers using the services of prostitutes in Costa Rica do not drive or have  a car. To meet the demand, the downtown core of San José is full of “pensiones”, hotels that offer rooms for an hour to a few hours. Some with full hotel services, like a restaurant an room service.

And lastly, in San José there are more than 150 “massage parlours”, houses where the girls and the room are under one roof, with prices range from a few thousand colones (a few dollars) in some of the nastiest places in the area of the Mercado Bourbon to places like in the upscale Rohrmoser that offer a full hour massage for ¢25.000 (US$50) and everything in between.

Back to Zurich’s Sex Boxes.

There are a variety of rules to keep the situation at the “sex boxes” safe and sanitary. These are explained in the sign below.

We’ve done our best to translate (going right to left then working down):

•     No one under the age of eighteen.
•     Only cars can use the facility — no motorbikes, people on foot, or bicycles.
•     Just one client at a time.
•     Use the facilities provided, not the outdoor space.
•     Again, do not use the outdoor space.
•     Do not go off facility grounds
•     Throw away your trash.
•     No photography, filming, or recording (or singing, perhaps).

It may all seem a little strange but the logic is understandable — keeping prostitution out of Zurich city centre and creating a safer environment for prostitutes, who will also have access to things like showers, a small kitchen, and an area to rest.

There are some doubts, however, that the prostitutes and their customers will use the facility — which is said to have cost 2.1 million Swiss francs ($2.2 million) to build and 700,000 Swiss francs ($750,000) a year to operate.

If you are in need of work in Costa Rica, you might feel encouraged by the various employment (job) fairs that offer thousands of available positions to job seekers in diverse industries.

Attending one of these fairs, which take place several times a year, will leave you feeling pretty upbeat about your work prospects, at least until you realize that after a few weeks not one potential employer has contacted you with a job opportunity.

At the same time, you might start to notice that the number of telemarketing calls, promotional text messages and spam email you receive has increased exponentially since you started going to these job fairs. And these unsolicited offers happen to be mysteriously customized to your particular consumer profile in Costa Rica. What is going on here?

The scenario above can be attributed to the unholy union of the marketing and job search industries in Costa Rica. This interesting business model takes advantage of the anguish of the unemployed for the purpose of harvesting data that can be sold to marketing intelligence firms, or else it allows companies to show off their products and services while they market themselves directly to prospective customers. This is not to say that no hiring takes place at these job fairs, but it is very disproportionate in comparison to marketing.

The Job Search Gold Mine

The popular blog El Chamuko has a couple of examples of the unemployment industry in Costa Rica:

1. The ExpoEmpleo job fair, which this year will take place at the Old Customs (Antigua Aduana) building in San Jose from September 6^th to the 8^th, charges an admission fee of about $3 per job seeker. Employers must pay $1,600 for a stand at this job fair. El Chamuko estimates that revenue from this job fair is about $100,000.
2. The other example is even more egregious. A company named Fusion Empresarial promises clerical jobs that pay about $500 per month. The company specifically targets young adults with high school diplomas. What happens at the interview in downtown San Jose is a combination of multi-level marketing (MLM) pitch and data gathering session. The bottom line is that employees must purchase $50 worth of jewelry and sell it for profit while recruiting other salespeople and building a “downline” …. You can guess where this is going.

Comments left by El Chamuko’s readers with regard to the two operations above indicate that no real hiring takes place in either situation.

The Employment Climate in Costa Rica

After years of prosperity and steady growth, the economy in Costa Rica is showing definite signs of cooling off. The national unemployment rate is back up to 10 percent, which is a figure that Costa Rica has lived comfortably with in the past. In the 21^st century, however, changing socioeconomic conditions in this country are pushing workers to deal with the dynamics of the job marketplace. This means that, in the past, unemployed Ticos enjoyed a certain safety net in case their job search was unsuccessful.

The safety net elements of yore included close familial relations, a minimal consumer credit and debt culture, a manageable rate of inflation, constant availability of reasonably compensated agricultural jobs, a strong U.S. dollar, and others. These days, however, the U.S. dollar fails to impress, agricultural jobs have been taken by Nicaraguan workers willing to work for sharply reduced pay, inflation is outpacing earnings, and the consumer and debt culture in Costa Rica is becoming similar to that of the U.S.

In other words, Ticos are starting to live from paycheck to paycheck. This leads to a hunger for more and better jobs, which were very much available from the late 20^th century until recently. These jobs were created by the Free Trade Agreement, the gaming and sportsbook industry, outsourcing, and the generally upbeat global economy. The job market in Costa Rica, however, is becoming saturated due to supply and demand mechanisms.

A recent survey of workers in Costa Rica, conducted by the Ministry of Planning and the United Nations, shows that only 15 percent of Ticos think that their salaries and working conditions are adequate. The survey also points out hidden patterns of discrimination, whereby employers shun young applicants as well as those who are older than 40 years of age. The following applicants will have an even harder time finding a job in Costa Rica:

• Women
• Those who live with disabilities
• Those who live in rural communities
• Immigrants
• Those who don’t have university education
• Those with Liberal Arts degrees

In general, the workforce in Costa Rica is well-educated and skilled. Employers know this and are willing to exploit it by driving up competition and keeping wages stagnant; hence the proliferation of private universities in Costa Rica in recent years. Many Tico professionals are willing to invest in getting an additional university degree just so that they can have a job in the future, especially at a time when bilingual call center workers no longer cut it: Trilingual is the way to go -but don’t expect to be paid more for your polyglot ways; just be thankful you are employable.

The business climate in Costa Rica is clearly conducive to the lucrative job search industry, and thus we should expect growth to continue in this thriving sector.

Article by Costa Rica Star

(IPS) – The law passed in Nicaragua to grant a concession to a Chinese company to build a canal between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans repealed legislation that protects Lake Cocibolca and its tributaries.

Lake Cocibolca, also known as Lake Nicaragua, is the biggest source of freshwater in Central America and the second largest lake in Latin America after Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo.

The alarm over the new threats to the lake was sounded by two local NGOs, the Nicaraguan Alliance on Climate Change (ANACC) and the National Risk Management Body (MNGR), in representation of 20 environmental groups in the country.

Law 840, dubbed “the great inter-oceanic canal law” by the press, was approved by the legislature in June, with the votes of the governing left-wing Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) of President Daniel Ortega.

The canal, which will go across the lake, will be nearly four times longer than its rival, the Panama Canal.

The concession to build and run the canal for 50 years, extendable by another 50 years, was won by the Hong Kong-based Chinese company HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co. Ltd. (HKND Group), owned by Chinese tycoon Wang Jing. The cost of building the canal is an estimated 40 billion dollars.

According to the MNGR, the new legislation repealed the laws that defend the country’s natural resources and bodies of water, included in the “legal compendium on potable water and sanitation”.

The compendium, compiled in 2011 by the national commission on potable water and sanitation and sewage, includes 85 laws, decrees, municipal ordinances, constitutional provisions, international treaties and administrative regulations that protect the country’s bodies of water.

But the canal law establishes that it is the state’s obligation to guarantee the concession-holder “access to and navigation rights on rivers, lakes, oceans and other bodies of water in Nicaragua, and the right to extend, expand, dredge, divert or reduce such bodies of water.”

The state also gives up the right to sue the investors in national or international courts for any damage caused to the environment during the studies for and the construction and operation of the canal.

Law 840 also revoked the principle of application of the general law on national waters, which established that Lake Cocibolca “must be considered a national reserve of potable water, being of the utmost interest to, and highest national priority for, national security.”

Nicaragua granted HKND control over the lake and its surrounding areas, including 16 watersheds and 15 protected areas, where 25 percent of the country’s rainforest is concentrated, David Quintana of the Nicaraguan Foundation for Sustainable Development told Tierramérica*.

The proposed canal routes run through nature reserves that are home to hundreds of species of plants, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, molluscs and crustaceans.

The assistant director of the Humboldt Centre, Víctor Campos, said the canal would simply destroy any chance of making Lake Cocibolca the source of water for all of Central America at some point in the future.

“Construction of the canal and conservation of water for human consumption are mutually exclusive – you either have a canal or you have a reservoir of water for the population,” Campos told Tierramérica.

The canal will be built across 190 km of land, while an additional 80 km of the route will go through Lake Cocibolca. It will serve larger ships than the Panama Canal.

Biologist Salvador Montenegro, director of the Research Centre for Aquatic Resources of the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua, told Tierramérica that the work on the lake will generate enormous amounts of sediment that will muddy the water and suffocate most of the fish and other forms of life.

Montenegro said the size of the canal – 520 metres wide and 27.6 metres deep – poses the worst environmental scenario for the lake and surrounding watersheds.

“A small oil leak, an earthquake, or the strong winds that blow in that area could cause an ecological catastrophe that would forever put an end to potential human consumption from the lake,” the activist said.

The same concern was voiced by Jaime Incer Barquero, a scientist who advises President Ortega on environmental issues.

“We are still in time to rectify this and not make the extremely serious mistake of endangering the biggest source of water in the country and Central America; no canal is worth as much as that lake,” Barquero told Tierramérica.

In the face of the barrage of criticism, the president has stated that the environmental impact study will be decisive in determining the future of the canal project and the route it will take.

But the environmental and technical authorities did not respond to the arguments of the possible environmental risks, and have merely stressed the economic benefits that the canal will bring to Nicaragua.

HKND spokesman Ronald MacLean has stated in several communiqués that the British consultancy Environmental Resources Management would carry out a professional environmental impact assessment of the different routes considered for the canal.

“Obviously, we also have to address the environmental question, because we will have to see what impact the project will have and what will be the cost of a remediation programme so that the final outcome is positive,” he said in an early August email sent out by the company’s public relations firm in Managua.

Meanwhile, environmental organisations, business groups and opposition sectors, as well as indigenous communities worried about threats to their land and their access to water, are preparing to bring legal action against the project.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Article by QNicaragua