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Daily News - 21 March 2000
Caribbean free trade agreement negotiations conclude
Free trade negotiations for the first protocol for the free trade agreement between the DR and Caricom concluded in Basse-Terre, St. Kitts yesterday. The agreement took 16 rounds of negotiations and almost four years.
A first draft was signed 22 August 1998 in Santo Domingo during a Caribbean heads of state summit. The agreement grants duty free treatment to nearly 8,000 products, only 50 products, of which 31 are Caricom and 19 Dominican Republic. Pending still are origin criteria for assembly sectors and certain apparel, will be negotiated during the first annual revision of the protocol. Ambassador Frederic Emam Zade, who has rank of deputy minister of foreign relations, head the negotiations for the Dominican government. In the last round, the DR was able to exclude from the Caricom negative list pastas, coffee, rum, footwear, apparel, marmalades, tropical processed tropical fruit juices (except orange juice).
Once the agreements enter into effect (it still needs to be passed by the Dominican Congress), the DR would become a bridge between Central America and the Caribbean whereby products from others islands can be processed and transformed into final products for export to nearby nations. Thus a trade block and market of about 60 million inhabitants would have been created.
General says the Ministry of Public Works is responsible for Victoria tragedy
Attorney General Cesar Pina Torribio blamed the Ministry of Public Works for the Saturday tragedy at the Victoria Jail. Eleven inmates died and 41 suffered serious burns when reportedly a sheet caught on fire in a cell where 369 prisoners were confined in an area of 471 square meters and one door. Prison guards had to break holes into the walls of the cell to release the prisoners.
Pina Torribio said that the Ministry had delayed in completing the remodeling works that are pending at the jail.
The improvement of conditions of prisoners in the DR has not been a government priority. While the government funded the study of what needs to be done, funds to implement the projects have not been available.
Last year, well respected lawyer Aura Celeste Fernández resigned from her post with the state Penitentiary Commission when the government allotted RD$3.5 million for prison reform after the commission had budgeted a minimum RD$34 million to start to turn around the prison system.
Half of those in jail (more than 14,000 persons are in Dominican jails) have not received sentences from the judiciary. Justice in the DR is slow because of all the legal entanglements the present Penal Code allows and that are manipulated by lawyers. The government recently presented a new Penal Code that would simplify the management of cases by justice, speeding up the completion of cases and having an effect on reducing congestion of Dominican jails.
Water corporation confirms supply down 50%
Several neighborhoods in Santo Domingo are affected by a water shortage. CAASD director Euclides Sánchez says that it hasn't rained for five months in the capital city. The drought has lowered water entering the system by 50% he told the Listín Diario. The barrios are purchasing their water from cistern trucks. Hoy newspaper reports the deficit is at 90 million gallons per second.
Meanwhile, Frank Rodríguez, in charge of INDRHI, which oversees dams in the DR, said that the drought has not affected the reservoir water levels of the country's dams. He says the levels are still adequate for crop irrigation.
Ministry of Public Works takes charge of Olympic Village project
Engineer Roque Napoleón Muñoz confirmed in an interview with Hoy newspaper that the tender to choose the builders of the Pan American village should have been annulled. He said none of the builders filled the minimum specifications. That is, none of the companies guaranteed the sale of the apartments necessary to pay back the investment in their construction.
"Up to where I was with the commission, things went well," he said. He was part of the commission appointed by the Pan American Games organizing committee to oversee the competitive solicitation. Other members also released from their responsibility were Manuel Estrella, TV producer Freddy Beras Goico, Minister of Industry and Commerce Luis Manuel Bonetti, and Minister of Education Ligia Amada Melo.
Despite the builders not assuming the responsibility for the sale of the apartment, the Ministry of Public Works is going ahead, choosing Spanish-Dominican consortium, Alpha OHL.
The company just has to declare bankruptcy, and Dominican taxpayers will have to pay back the loan the company will be securing in Spain to build the village.
Real estate developers doubt that buyers will be found to pay the RD$2.3 million minimum price of the luxury apartments that will go up diagonally across from the Juan Pablo Duarte Olympic Center.
The Dominican Olympic Committee and the Ministry of Public Works had repeatedly told those that criticized the high cost of the Games on the Dominican economy said that the cost of the village would be assumed by the private sector. The towers are estimated to cost RD$1,100 million.
José Joaquin Puello Herrera, president of the Dominican Olympic Committee and the Santo Domingo Pan American Games Organizing Committee washed his hands saying that the Ministry of Public Works is now in charge of the process. He said that Pan Am Games organizers are only interested in receiving the eight towers of 23 floors and 700 apartments 18 days before the start of the Games.
Prior to the start of the Fernández administration, today Minister of Public Works Diandino Peña, who has head the village negotiations, was a renowned builder of luxury towers.
Talks for construction of DR-Haiti free zones advance
El Siglo newspaper reports that talks are advanced with the governments of France, US and Canada for funding to build industrial free zones on the Dominican-Haitian frontier. The DR has sold these countries the idea of the free zones as part of an integral solution to reduce unemployment in Haiti and start building infrastructure that would contribute to improving living conditions for Haitian and Dominican frontier areas. The DR government wants to reduce migration of the very poor to the DR, while increasing their buying power for Dominican goods. The new jobs would relieve social pressure in Haiti.
The idea is for Haitians to cross the border during the day to work at the industrial plants, and return to the newly created towns in the late afternoon.
Rosa Ng de Eberle, spokesperson for the project from her role as Deputy Technical Secretary of the Presidency, said the project envisions an investment of US$250 million in the parks and complementary works.
The DR government is convincing the governments of France, US and Canada to participate in the funding of the project. Also involved are multilateral organizations such as the World Bank and the Interamerican Development Bank.
The idea is modeled on the US-Mexico frontier model. Years back, Donald Reid Cabral proposed a similar project.
JCE okays Balaguer as presidential candidate
The Junta Central Electoral rejected the impugning of the presidential candidacy of former President Joaquín Balaguer by relatives and friends of assassinated journalist Orlando Martínez. The candidacy challenge was rejected on grounds that it was "unfounded and lacking of legal base."
The relatives of the assassinated journalist had requested that Judge Francisco Ortega order the arrest of the former statesman for hiding evidence and complicity in the case.
PLD presents its government plan for 2000-2004
The Partido de la Liberación Dominicana formally put into circulation its government platform for 2000-2004. The program focuses on promoting sustainable economic development, an increase in social equity, consolidation of democracy and improvement of government management.
Temístocles Montás, Technical Secretary of the Presidency and member of the party's Political Committee said that the strategy presented consolidates the vision of a modern social economy as applied in the first PLD administration by today President Leonel Fernández.
He said in a second government, a PLD administration would stress more solidarity with the poorer sectors of the nation, with a clear focus to combat poverty.
Prostitutes hold their second congress
Dominican prostitutes celebrated their Second National Congress of Sexual Workers with the opening taking place at the National Library. The workshops are taking place at the headquarters of the Instituto de Formación y Acción Sindical (INFAS), a union training center. Movimiento de Mujeres (MODEMU) which has a membership of 400 sexual workers organizes the congress. On the opening day, Isabel Cuevas de la Cruz says that a study carried out by the Centro de Orientación e Investigación Integral (COIN) showed there are about 100,000 Dominican prostitutes on the job in the DR and abroad primarily in Panama, Spain, Switzerland, Austria and Germany.
Modemu spokesperson said that Dominican women become prostitutes when they cannot get adequately paid jobs,
due to the local macho man culture of Dominicans that do not provide for the mainstay of their children, and under the influence of today's consumer society.
Cuevas de la Cruz, who the Hoy newspaper report said spoke very well for a person who only had a second grade educational level, lamented that prostitutes are persecuted and rejected by Dominican society, while the owners of whorehouses are treated like respectable businessmen. While prostitution is outlawed, in the DR it is tolerated.
Book on Dominican flora soon for sale
A second edition of the book by Henri Alain Liogier, discoverer of the Flor de Bayahibe, an endemic flower, will be released tomorrow during a ceremony at the Central Bank.
The second edition of the Botanical Dictionary of the Dominican Republic contains common names for the flora available in the DR. It features 80 color photos, 290 drawings and abundant information on the flora of the island of Hispaniola. The presentation of the book is scheduled for Wednesday, 22 March at the Salón Salomé Ureña de Henríquez of the Central Bank. The Jardín Botánico Nacional, the Centro para el Desarrollo Agropecuario y Forestal and the Plan Nacional Quisqueya Verde sponsored the book.
Mr. Liogier is one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on Cuban, Puerto Rican and Dominican flora. He has been an associate researcher of the New York Botanical Garden, University of Harvard and Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.
He has researched the flora of the Dominican Republic since the 60s.
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