por ALFREDO AZCARATE VARELA
THE BAJA POST/EDITOR
Peculiar story where honest workers are criminalized and even their clients and customers could wind up in jail, it´s a new Law that may turn UBER drivers and users into criminals.
A Catch 22 is a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules or limitations, the easiest example is when young people looking for a job, find themselves unemployed because they have no experience, but: How can they get experience when they cannot find a job?, the same happens to drivers working for UBER, DIDI and other similar companies, in Baja California
The term comer from a Joseph Heller novel about pilots from the air force who “wanted out” of World War II caliming they were not mentally fit for combat, but if a pilot requested a psychiatric exam to determine his mental sanity, he had clarity of mind and was not crazy at all, so it was a dead end, something similar has happened to drivers working in Baja California for mobile apps such as UBER.
Governor Jaime Bonilla passed a Law through Congress (with almost no opposition at all) it´s the Bill 77, which creates the so called Mobilization Law, which orders the companies to “register” (that is by means of big money payments) and submit a list of all those chauffeurs working for them, once they are all registered they may work.
But, there´s a Catch 22 here, the Law has been passed and published in the so called State Official Journal so it´s valid now, and there´s from 3 months to 6 years jail time for those who drive without being registered, even when the Mobilization Institute, created to regulate transportation in Baja California, exists only in paper, there is no physical address, no Internet site, no place (physical or virtual) where they can get the required registration.
So, while slow and treacherous Mexican politician´s creations as this, advance and gets the necessary infrastructure, the drivers can´t work because they are not registered and they haven´t gotten over with that because, even if they want to follow the rules, there is nowhere to go to fulfill the requirements of the new Baja California Mobilization Law, it´s Catch 22 all over again.
