Anonymous
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Red Tape Halts Humanitarian Aid Shipment
Tijuana, Mexico, Nov 26, 2002 (EFE via COMTEX) -- Mexico's excessive red tape prevented a shipment of medical equipment from the United States from
entering the country, officials said.
The equipment, donated by the U.S.-based organization Operation Walk, included medical equipment and prostheses valued at $500,000.
Additionally, 48 U.S. physicians were expected to travel to Mexico to perform 35 surgeries on the needy, the head of the state-run Comprehensive
Family Development System (DIF) in Baja California, Bertha Garcia Melgar, said.
Physicians would also donate their equipment, and allow Mexican doctors first to observe and eventually assist in the surgeries.
However, Tijuana customs official Jorge Vargas refused to allow the shipment into Mexico, "despite verbal authorizations having been issued," Garcia
said.
Garcia acknowledged that the shipment did not have all the appropriate paperwork, but added that at no time did Vargas offer any assistance to get it
through, resulting in the shipment being stuck in a warehouse in San Diego, California.
For his part, Vargas said he lacked the authority to allow the shipment to enter the country without appropriate paperwork, because this would have
resulted in legal action against customs.
Vargas said the Treasury Secretariat should have issued the proper authorization.
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Stephanie Jackter
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Posts: 566
Registered: 11-3-2002
Location: Arizona
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This kind of thing just burns me up.
It's so sad, when there is so much need for this kind of thing, that the beurocracy can get in the way and stop a bunch of people from doing good
works dead in their tracks. I take truckloads of clothes and blankets down to Nogales around this time every year and am always afraid that I may get
turned back and not be able to deliver the stuff to people who desperately need it. A few years ago when I first started these runs, there was a
particularly severe cold snap and it made the Tucson papers that people in Nogales were dying like flies, especially little children living in
makeshift shelters who couldn't bare the cold well. So tons of Tucsonans got together and had blanket drives. Almost all of the blankets were
stopped at the border and turned back under the pretense that providing these items could interfere with local businesses who sell the same products
in Nogales. The level of federal insensitivity to the problems of the poor can just be INSANE sometimes.
By the way, if there is anyone around Tucson who might be interested in joining me to take stuff down to Nogales, I will be making at least one trip
before Christmas and a couple afterwards from an anual drive I do at my kids' school. The people in the barrios in Nogales can use blankets,
comforters, sweaters, coats, gloves, warm shoes, sleeping bags, sweats, and any other particularly warm clothing. I also keep my eye out for cheap
bikes, skates and sturdy cooking pans, and stuff like bats and balls and crayons, coloring books and craft sets from the dollar stores for the kids.
If you can help in any way, including with delivery, give me a holler. - Stephanie
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Anonymous
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U.S. medical team forced to cancel charitable mission to Mexico
BY LARISSA RUIZ CAMPO
Knight Ridder Newspapers
MIAMI - (KRT) - A 48-member U.S. medical team on a charitable mission to Mexico was forced to abort its plan to perform free operations on elderly
people in the state of Baja California earlier this month because of bureaucratic delays and possible negligence by Mexican authorities, the U.S.
physicians say.
"We've never experienced anything like this," said Carlos Lavernia, a Miami-based doctor director of Latin American affairs for the "Operation Walk"
organization. "This is a foundation with a lot of experience" foreign countries.
The problem arose when the Operation Walk truck carrying about $3 million worth of knee and hip implants plus other material required for the
operations was stopped at the Mexican border, allegedly because it did not have the proper entry documents.
Half of the U.S. team - seven surgeons, two anesthetists, nine nurses and 20 medical assistants - were waiting for the truck in La Paz, Baja
California, where they were scheduled to perform operations on 35 patients between Nov. 4 and Nov. 7.
"They sent us back and forth for four days, saying the papers were not complete," Lavernia said. "They said we had not paid an import duty, and that
the needed a waiver signed by an official who couldn't be reached, neither of which was true."
Bertha Garcia Melgar, director of the Baja California state office in charge of carrying out the paperwork, told The Miami Herald that state officials
may have been partly responsible for the problem.
"We should have known better what papers were required to let the cargo in."
But Garcia Melgar added that the documents arrived at her office only 12 days before the operations were scheduled, when they should have arrived a
month earlier.
Lavernia says "all the paperwork was done almost a year before going there."
By Nov. 7, the medical team had to return to their U.S. jobs, and the mission was canceled, he said.
(Staff writer Andres Oppenheimer contributed to this report.)
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Dave
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Registered: 11-5-2002
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I deal with aduana on a regular basis importing goods and equipment for my business. Besides the corruption and inefficiency, they are, as most
Mexican government agencies, VERY anal. If the t's are not crossed and the i's not dotted NOTHING gets done. My wife who is a Psych nurse says that
this passive aggressive behavior is in response to the government screw-ups they have to deal with daily. It's a shame that innocent folk have to
suffer along with them.
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