Porteadores Will Take To The Streets Tomorrow in Protest
Porteadores promise to take to the streets tomorrow (Tuesday) to force the government to allow them to continue to provide transportation services under the "private" contract and demand respect for their business.

The protestors are expected to be in San José by the early hours tomorrow and will gather in front of the Legislative Assembly building in downtown San José. The program calls for a great concentration of the Porteadores who are expected to block downtown traffic, as well as other major routes around the country.

The differences between the Porteadores and the government aren't new, as these types of demonstrations have already taken place a number of times. In some cases, anti-riot police had to be called in to keep the peace.

According to Carlos Rodríguez, director of the Cámara Costarricense de Porteadores, the group will be out in full force to demonstrate and not just a few as has been rumoured. Rodríguez said the main force of the demonstration will be in San José, but Porteadores around the county will hold demonstrations in their provinces as well.

The demonstration is to demand the Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transportes (MOPT) it once and for all decide to regulate or eliminate the business of porteo.

The porteo is the informal taxi business that has over the years become a force in the face of higher taxi fares and especially in communities where formal taxis do not or will not provide services.

The porteo is based on a contract between the service and the customer. Customers are picked up at the door and delivered to their destination and unlike the formal taxis, they do not pick up fares on the street. And that is where the controversy begins.

Formal taxis, who are marked in red and clearly identified with a yellow triangle, argue that many Porteadores operate as "taxi", picking up fares on the street and cutting into their business.

The protest planned for tomorrow is mainly due to the ambigous declarations by the MOPT minister, Karla González, who along with the Comisión de Jurídicos de la Asamblea Legislativa, said that Porteadores who depend solely on the "porteo" can obtain taxi plates.

Rodríguez argues that the Minister knows full well that the taxi plates to the Porteadores cannot be issued that easily as she says and what will happen is a confrontation between Porteadores and formal taxis.

"The minister is lying when she says that soon there will be bidding for additional taxi plates when there is a pending legal issue against the government, which makes it impossible to offer the plates", said Rodríguez.

Rodríguez says that the MOPT minister's solution is to offer the Porteadores a taxi license plate that would convert them into legal taxis; however, the leaders of the Porteadores consider that this is almost an impossibility because the MOPT can't just offer the plates without a due process.