For a full day the media in Panama published each and every detail they could come up with about the cab driver who got killed by a slab of steel falling off the Rivage Tower under construction on Avenida Balboa, but somehow failed to mention who the actual building company was that is responsible for what authorities call "serious security failures".
Well, that turns out to be H.A. Engineering Inc., we finally learned today in El Panama America.
In any normal country, this company would be sued for damages well into the many millions of dollars for security failures and responsibility for the death of the taxi driver. But this is Panama, the country of "los groceros somos más" where rich maleantes always get away with everything. So the spokeswoman of this originally Colombian outfit, one Janeth Morain, said that the company will pay the costs the family incurs, as in "funeral", because this was just an "accident".
Shall we do some straight talk? A Colombian construction company operating in Panama is a likely suspect for money laundering, especially since workers and suppliers regularly are paid in cash by such outfits and the whole Panamanian construction/real estate sector, says the DEA, is a vehicle for massive laundering of narco funds. On top of that, the routine in this whole shadowy world of developers and construction projects is to play fast and loose with safety regulations, which has cost the lives of many construction workers already and now even of innocent cab drivers, and then these narco-builders have the temerity to call that "an accident".
You know what? The same day that this cab driver was killed by these construction crooks, another worker died because of non-compliance with safety regulations, at another one of these narco-towers: Star Bay. We just hope SUNTRACS puts these people out of business.
UPDATE: Star Bay refuses inspectors of the Labor Ministry access to inspect security precautions after the death of a worker. Sinverguenzas.