GONZALES, La. Dan Ahern has stepped down as president of Eatel Corporation and will be replaced by a member of the family that owns the Gonzales-based telecommunications company.

Ahern had been president since 1999. He will be replaced by John Scanlan, who has been active in the company’s operations over the last few years.

Ahern was hired in 1996 as Eatel’s vice president of sales and marketing. Eatel spokeswoman Lisa Froman says Ahern didn’t indicate whether he was leaving his current post for personal or professional reasons. But, she says he’s been traveling a lot recently to his home in California so his decision last week to resign was not unexpected.

Froman says the change doesn’t represent any new direction for the company, which employs more than 500 people and provides Internet, local and long-distance service, Web hosting and development and telephone directory advertising to residents in Baton Rouge, Lafayette, New Orleans and our home territory of Ascension and Livingston parishes.

The company is privately held by the Scanlan family of Gonzales. It expanded service last year into the Mississippi Gulf Coast counties of Hancock, Harrison and Jackson, offering local and long-distance phone and dial-up Internet services.

Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Ruth E. Hernandez Beltran.

New York’s Hispanic bodega owners will have their own line of products on the shelves by the end of the year, hoping to combat high costs of brand-name items and offer better prices to clients.

Customers will be able to purchase varied products from Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic, after the bodegueros, as the owners of the Latino neighborhood grocery stores are known, reach agreement with manufacturers in those countries to create an exclusive line for the New York Bodega Association.

Jose Fernandez, the Dominican-born head of the bodegueros’ association, told EFE the group has already taken the first steps to launch its own long-distance calling cards, available only in select neighborhood stores under the «Mi Bodega» banner.

Fernandez said public reaction to the new calling cards has been favorable thus far.

«The idea of having our own products has existed since the foundation of the association, but we could never carry it out,» Fernandez said.

«After several months of consideration, last year we realized it was feasible, and we found companies willing to work with us,» he said.

According to Fernandez, the «Mi Bodega» brand will include fruit and juice products, coconut milk, water, rice, malt drinks, sodas, oregano and cassava bread, mostly hailing from the Dominican Republic.

«The big problem we have here is that the manufacturers don’t sell to bodegueros because the volume they buy is smaller than that of supermarkets,» he said.

Fernandez said bodegueros have to buy supplies for their businesses at warehouses and pay for their transport, driving prices up by 20–30 percent compared to supermarkets.

New York has some 13,000 bodegas, of which 7,200 belong to the association. By Ruth E. Hernandez Beltran. rh/rv/cd

Source: Copyright (c) 2004. Agencia EFE. S. A.