QCOSTARICA – The Legislative Assembly approved in second (and final) debate the bill that turns the district of Puerto Jiménez into the 84th canton of Costa Rica.
Currently, it is the second district of the canton of Golfito, located in the province of Puntarenas.
The legislator for the Partido Liberacion Nacional (PLN), Franggi Nicolás, said that with this bill justice is done with the community of Puerto Jiménez.
“We are talking about a community that is 116 kilometers from Golfito, three hours by bus and two and a half hours by car, an enormous punishment of distance from the institutions that should be serving them more closely,” the legislator pointed out.
The geographical distance between Puerto Viejo and Golfito has been “a barrier and an isolation” for the new canton, despite the fact that it has all the conditions to develop.
Located in the southern part of the country, Puerto Jiménez has a territory of 720 square kilometers and a population of about 12,800 people, according to estimates by the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INEC) for 2022.
This is the third canton created by the legislators of the current four-year term. The two others are Río Cuarto, in the province of Alajuela, and Monteverde, also in in the province of Puntarenas.
