The College shall have power:
(a) To subsist in perpetuity under that name.
(b) To possess and use a seal, which it can alter at will.
(c) To sue and be sued as an [juridical] person.
(d) To acquire rights and properties, both real and personal and any funds by donation, legacy, taxes on its own members, purchase, transfers, cessions, subsidy, appropriations, advances, loans and other analogous payments of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, or of any of its departments, as well as from federal, Commonwealth and municipal government entities and private persons and entities to carry out its purposes; and to enter into agreements with the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico or any of its departments and with such government entities or private persons or entities for the use of such funds or real or personal properties as well as to possess them, administer them, mortgage them, lease them and dispose thereof in any manner as it may deem necessary to perform its purposes.
(e) To grant and execute all the documents necessary or adequate to the exercise of its powers and duties.
(f) To appoint its officers or officials amounting to twenty-one (21) of which at least one (1) shall correspond to each senatorial district.
(g) To adopt its bylaws, which shall be binding on all its members, as prescribed by the Board of Directors hereinafter established; and to amend same in the form, and under the requirements established therein.
(h) To adopt or implant a code of occupational ethics which shall govern the conduct of its members.
(i) To receive and investigate the complaints that may be made in regard to the conduct of the members of the College and to transmit the complaints to the Board of Directors for action, and after a hearing in which an opportunity shall be given to the interested party, if well-founded cause is found, to proceed to suspend or remove the chauffeur as member of the College and to notify such action, setting forth the basis for same, to the Public Service Commission or to the Department of Transportation and Public Works, or both, as the case may be, for proper action.
(j) To build any facility that may be necessary and advisable for the purposes of this chapter.
(k) To protect its members in the exercise of their occupation of chauffeur and through the creation of pension funds, insurance systems and special funds, or in any other way to help those who are unemployed, who suffer accidents, who are sick or who retire for physical disability or advanced age, and the heirs or the beneficiaries of those who die.
(l) To promote the improvement of the working and living conditions of the chauffeurs and their families.
(m) To make available legal counsel or assistance to members in the exercise of the occupation of chauffeur or of other nature connected with their work.
(n) To exercise such incidental powers as may be necessary or advisable for the purposes of its creation and operation and for the most effective attainment of the public policy set forth in this chapter.
History —June 27, 1969, No. 102, p. 282, § 3, eff. July 1, 1969.