By The Star Staff
Bayamón Mayor Ramón Luis Rivera Cruz, who chairs the Incoming Transition Committee of Governor-elect Jenniffer González Colón, has proposed the elimination of the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Co. (PRIDCO) because, he said, it is a useless “permanent government.”
“I have seen this so many times that I don’t see any way that this permanent government that we have in some places will allow for real changes in Puerto Rico,” Rivera Cruz said during the deposition of PRIDCO Executive Director Carlos Ríos Pierluisi on Thursday.
“The only thing that occurs to me is that we eliminate PRIDCO and create a new project,” the Bayamón mayor said.
Ríos Pierluisi answered that pursuing that option will not necessarily solve the problem that Rivera Cruz poses.
Rivera Cruz asserted that PRIDCO does virtually nothing to attract potential investors.
“Since 2001, I have never managed to get PRIDCO to sell or allow a client with economic potential to enter the abandoned or contaminated buildings in the City of Bayamón,” the mayor said.
“In 24 years, I have not seen any change, no improvement,” Rivera Cruz added. “You go there to PRIDCO, and the first thing that [the security guards] ask for is identification, name, and where you are going. You have an appointment, you arrive with the client there, you wait for hours until they finally attend to you. We go to the place, and we arrive at the place; they always send a representative from PRIDCO, and yes, of course, that is all.”
“I mean, what can we do to change that?” he asked.
The mayor proposed launching a pilot project that would transfer PRIDCO properties to municipalities with economic capacity so that they can find occupants for the buildings.
Popular Democratic Party Sen. Juan Zaragoza Gómez, a member of the transition committee noted that one of the excuses used by the so-called permanent government is that abandoned buildings “cannot be sold or rented because they are pledged.”
Ríos Pierluisi and State Department Secretary Omar Marrero Díaz both said that “urban legend” is not true.
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