Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
If this law should apply to public employees, why not to other employees as well? This forum is full of reports of employees doing a crappy job or even stealing from their employers and then demanding (and getting) severence pay and other benefits. Ordinary citizens and residents are becoming cautious about hiring Ticos because of the way the current law is written. I personally know some Ticos who prefer to hire illegals from Nicaraugua because they are not in a position to complain about not getting benefits. They are happy to have a job in Costa Rica. They work hard and do a good job in oder to keep the job.
[quote=”waggoner41″][quote=”costaricafinca”]Our dogs presently have ticks and botflies, and have had medicines, powders, shots….
Luckily, we have just had the ticks!:roll:[/quote]One of our dogs was susceptible to bot flies and we began spraying him daily with [b]OFF[/b] for three weeks. He hasn’t been bothered by the flies in several months but I am reserving judgement as to whether the treatment, for reasons I don’t know, may be permanent until a year has passed.[/quote]
Animals get bot flies from mosquitoes – the fly catches the mosquito in the air and attaches an egg. When the mosquito bites an animal, the bot egg falls off, hatches and bores into the animal. So mosquito control is the key to preventing bot flies. Many aromatic compounds, including OFF, will discourage mosquitoes from biting. Ticks are not so easily detoured.We have used Advantix and Revolution (but not at the same time) with good luck. Revolution is a little more expensive but it also prevents heartworms. The problem is that the ticks have to bite the dog before they get poisoned. This is the time of year (the dry season) when newly hatched ticks start appearing. They come in huge groups and so if your dog gets into a group of them they will be inundated with tiny, itchy ticks until the medicine kills them. Controling ticks on all fronts (cows, horses, dogs) seems to help reduce their numbers. Now I just need to find out how to keep the ticks off of me!
Frankly, I don’t see why anyone would renounce their US citizenship since doing that would mean giving up any Social Security benefits forever. Maybe if someone has a source of income that completely overshadows the Social Security benefit, it might have its advantages. As for me, Social Security is the only income I have, paltry as it may be now and more so in the future. A little income is better than none at all. In Costa Rica I can live on it. 🙂 We are lucky that we bought a farm 5 years ago in Costa Rica and recently planted hardwood trees. When Social Security from the US is no longer worth anything, the trees will be worth lots.
A year or so ago, CitiBank bought out Banco Cuscatlan. Then they proceeded to run the San Isidro PZ branch in the ground. Nearly all of the friendly cashiers and platform personel are gone. Some jumped ship early because of poor treatment. Other s either finally left or were let go. Now the branch only has 2 cashiers and 0 customer service. My preferred bank became my ex-bank. It was not worth giving them my business any longer. Also I understand that if they go under, the funds are only guaranteed 10%. I don’t know if that is a possibility, though. Citi has one of the largest buildings in San Jose. You can’t miss it on the Pam American. We are choosing to stick with the national banks now, namely BCR, because they have taken steps to make their customer service more efficient and they have parking in PZ.
You are exactly right. In this case the aguilado has been paid every year. The question here is whether a severance pay is due to someone who abandoned his job. He had the nerve to show up here 1 week after the aguinaldo was paid asking for $1000 as severance pay for working for me for 5 years (part time, intermittently, not always paid by me and never paid by the corporation that owns the farm). Also how does the court enforce severance pay when you don’t have a business?
My thoughts exactly. Why should a person be rewarded for abandoning an important job? It left the caretaker wondering when he would return. Then he had to scramble to find another worker in order to save a very expensive reforestation project. I am wondering if anyone else has been through this process. I have receipts for when I paid him and some of the pay was paid directly to his BCR bank account. There were also times that other people paid him that were staying at our farm and we weren’t there. So I’m thinking he needs to talk to these other people as well. He has no proof that I was paying him except those times that I gave him a receipt or he could get a print out from the bank. The farm is owned by a corporation. Also the receipts do not show who the payor is. They only show who received the money. What is the worst that can happen if he gets a judgement against me? A neighbor stole $7,000 worth of cows,horses and other property from us 3 years ago and it still has never come to trial even though some of the animals and property were found on his farm. The police never conficated the stolen property so they just let him keep it.
Yes I paid him the Xmas bonus already – added up all of the salary I paid him from December 1st 2010 through November 30th, 2011 (except for the aguialdo from the year before) and divided it by 12. That is the correct calculation as far as I know. I don’t think he deserves severance either and it’s a sure bet that I will never hire him again.
I have a former Tico worker who has worked off and on for us for the past 5 years. Several times he quit by not showing up for work for up to 3 months at a time. Last October, he quit coming again and only worked 9 hours in 3 months. We had just planted 9,000 trees 1 year ago and needed someone to keep the areas around the trees clear so that the trees could grow. When he stopped coming in October, it was right in the middle of this vital work. Our caretaker hired someone else to do the job so that we would not lose our trees. I considered that this Tico worker abandoned his job. Our caretaker even saw him working in the coffee fields of other Ticos. The other day he came by our farm to ask for his job back. I told him that we already hired someone else to replace him. Now today he came by to ask for severance pay. Do I owe him severence pay when I did not fire him? Rather he abandoned his job and went to work for other people thereby putting our reforestation project in jeopardy.
I just returned to Costa Rica on December 21st and I encountered almost exactly the same scenario. I have a residency card so I had no problem but my granddaughter (we have permanent custody of her but they did not ask for any documentation in this respect) was traveling with me. The return flight I had booked for her was more than 90 days away. I told them that we had purchased another ticket for her to return that was within the 90 days however they did not ask to see it. The ticket for her is actually 90 days plus 2 weeks. This happened at the the American Airlines main terminal ticket counter. The next question was upon arrival at SJO immigration. So they are checking everyone now to make sure they not only have a return ticket but also a return ticket within 90 days.
Only “Mother Nature” will decide when the rainy season really ends. I have seen it continue well into January and I remember being stuck on our dirt road in the car all night about 3 years ago. Thank goodness we have a gravel road now. Some years it ends early and some years it hangs on. I think of those late rainy season downpours as the rainy season’s last hurrah. It just that some rainy seasons have more hurrahs than others. 😉
The most colorful birds are the Tanagers and they love bananas. We impail the bananas on a horizontal board that has a few nails sticking up and mounted on the side of a tree or a top a fence. Use the ones that become over ripe that no one will eat. Peel a small section of the skin away and put the bananas with the meat up. This set up will also attract Honeycreepers, Motmots and others. You can watch from a comfy chair placed about 20 feet away. No need to buy bird seed.
It sounds like this unfortunate young woman screwed herself out of a car. She won’t be able to sell it without paying the fines and she won’t be able to re-register it at the end of the year. I can’t imagine what her options are at this point. Maybe drive the car until the end of the year and then sell it real cheap to someone who lives way out in the countryside where the traffic police never go and who will never drive it to town. They can use it to drive back and forth to relative’s houses. This is what Ticos do (I am told) when they get rediculously high traffic tickets (sometimes for really stupid stuff like having solar film on a back window) and they can’t afford the fine.
This is true as long as you have already submitted your application to migracion. As long as your application is pending, you don’t have to exit the country every 3 months (you will have gotten a form that shows that you have submitted all of your paperwork and that your application is pending) and you can spend substantially less time than 4 months in Costa Rica as well.
It starts when you receive your cedula. Once your application is approved, your contact person will be notified by fax. You will have a certain amount of time to complete the conditions to get your cedula. Then you will go back to migracion in San Jose to get your cedula. It will be a lamenated id with your picture on it and your cedula number. When you get that, your year starts and thus the 4 month stay in Costa Rica requirement. The 4 months does not have to be continuous. If it is, don’t forget to get your Costa Rican driver’s license before you have been in the country for 3 months. You can only use your foreign driver’s license for 3 months at a time.
