Monday, October 29, 2007

Once again... misreporting gets owners anxious and upset!

You may have read the recent posts on Ron's blog about the family that was evicted from their property by Suntracs. While some of the facts are correct, the issue has been taken totally out of context. Here is the note I got from Scott this morning:

I just responded to this same question from Bob Chirone and you can read my response to him below (which he asked if he could post to some blog and I consented).

But regarding your questions, Lot 13 is only framed up, no one is even close to living there. They were using this as an observation post. It was lot 34 that caused the problem and the owner was not living there – just a friend of his that was supervising the construction efforts of their own hired hands. The owner of 34 has been renting lot 48 which is where his family has been staying so no family has been evicted contrary to Ron’s overstated comments. Now, my comments to Bob…

Thank you for asking for clarification. Last week on a routine Suntracs inspection tour with the regional labor minister, the union was extremely upset to find that construction work was being done on a unit –specifically lot 34 – that we had already closed on (the owner was previously warned this construction would likely cause problems). Our feeling is that a current owner should be allowed to work on their home (since they had closed and had been issued a certificate of occupancy), but the labor union has the opposite view and was claiming that our construction company – Pillar Construction – was doing the work and that no construction work should be done, period.

Needless to say, our team of lawyers have been working on this case to get the illegal Suntracs workers off the project. I personally spent over an hour meeting with the Minister of Labor in Panama City, Minister Edwin Salamin, yesterday to get his support. He and his team of lawyers have been helpful in getting Suntracs out of the residential area (they were camped at 13 for one day – this home is only framed) and now off the entire property. By the way, my understanding is that only a friend of the owners was at the property when they were forced to shut down construction efforts. A family was not living there as Ron has reported. The police were there to make sure that this didn’t escalate into any violence like what has happened at Isla Viveros in the Pearl Islands.

But you can rest assured that we are working together to get this issue resolved and the bigger issue of getting the labor strike resolved once and for all. But as you can see from this example, they are not very reasonable people…

Mick @ Lot 83

Sunday, October 21, 2007

October Newsletter

Well, it's out. Does anyone have any thoughts? For myself, I thought it was more of the same. "Thanks for hanging in there... the strike's almost over..." When?????

Mick