For all its tourism, real estate development and high-technology firms, Guanacaste leads Costa Rica as the province with the highest rate of unemployment. As recently reported on the pages of the Costa Rica Star, more than 40,000 adults in Guanacaste are currently out of work, which is something that the Ministry of Labor is handling as an emergency.

According to a recent report written by Angie Lopez of Radio Columbia 98.7 FM, the Ministry of Labor has been monitoring the situation in Guanacaste over the last few weeks and recently kicked off a hasty plan of action. The Ministry enlisted the help of five agricultural firms in Costa Rica that will need to increase their field workforce from November to April. These are the harvest months for sugar cane, coffee, pineapple, orange, and melon.

Staff members from the Ministry of Labor traveled to Liberia and Santa Cruz, two regions that have seen their agricultural industry replaced by real estate development and tourism over the last few years. At the Central Park of Liberia, nearly 800 job seekers stopped by the informative booth set up by the Ministry and spoke to human resources personnel from the following companies: ExportPack, Del Monte, CATSA, and the sugar cane processing plants at El Viejo and Taboga.

The human resources representative from CATSA, which is the Spanish acronym for Central Sugar of the Tempisque, explained that they have plenty of jobs at their sugar cane fields but not many workers are willing to take them. Sugar cane harvesting is not an easy job. Costa Rica’s Minister of Labor Olman Segura observed that the majority of people who approached the information booth were Ticos, which runs opposite to the misconception that only foreigners -particularly farmhands from Nicaragua– are willing to work the fields.

An HR representative from Del Monte said the company hired 97 people in just a few hours; alas, not all positions involve picking melons. Del Monte turned down many applicants because they lacked the skills and minimum education to work on quality control, crop research and supervision.