In a press conference, the president of Costa Rica, Rodrigo Chaves, announced this Wednesday the decision of the Governing Council to suspend and criminally denounce five members of the board of directors of the CCSS, and its former executive president Álvaro Ramos, whom he fired in September passed to favor the salary adjustment of the employees of this institution.
In a press release, the Trade Union Unit states that, in another example of authoritarian and anti-democratic factionalism that the Government is demonstrating, it is adopting an absolutely illegal and inappropriate measure, such as the suspension of five directors of the CCSS Executive Board, among including the entire delegation of the labor sector (trade union, cooperative and solidarity).
It ensures that both the ethical chair and the executive chair of the CCSS, Martha Eugenia Esquivel, and the board of directors judge and condemn, in an act that can be considered a “revenge”.
Firstly, explains the Union Unit, because the administrators have rejected the two motions of the Government to voluntarily and illegally include the CCSS in the tax law, which would seriously affect health services.
Secondly, he continues, because despite all the tricks they have used, they have failed to prevent thousands of CCSS workers from being paid the wage adjustment.
«The President of the Republic is treacherously lying when he points out that the salary increase will cause a financial crisis in the CCSS, on the contrary, it is the billion-dollar debt with the CCSS and which this Government does not want to pay, which causes serious financial problems for the
institution”, underlines the trade union unit.
The group of workers, made up of the Union Central and the Confederations, the Teachers’ Organizations and the Costa Rican Union and the Unitary Social Bloc, expresses its solidarity with the directors of the CCSS, in particular with the elected representative of the working class, Martha Rodríguez , in CCSS Board of Directors.
Likewise, it rejects in all its extremes this arbitrary and very dangerous measure for the country’s democratic institutions.
For this reason, the trade union unit asks the Presidency of the Republic and its Governing Council to revoke this illegitimacy and to comply with the democratic rules of unconditional respect for the constitutional autonomy of the CCSS.
It also calls on the working class to defend the institutionality of the CCSS, and to prevent this government, tied to specious interests, from advancing in its attempt to dismantle and privatize the Social Security.
rgh/ale
