It’s a good thing that time waits for no one! As you are here in the DR you'll soon witness with your eyes those events unfolding month after month...
Just now, the last studies were conducted to lay down a fiber optic submarine cable all around the coast of the DR from tip to tip, to link all the areas to the new tech center of the country and the Nap of the Caribbean...
HDTV is currently within months of being mandatory for all local TV transmissions, as a spec was already picked for our country by a hired expert panel to Indotel...
Codetel, Orange and other telecommunications companies in the country have received special concessions to invest into the local systems to triple the capacity of the already taxed system as new regions are provided coverage as expected.
The Electrical distribution grid is undergoing a full scale study by an EU hired consultant to advise the gov on the most important and urgent needs in the system. Once the report is completed the gov will open bids to local and international companies to buy-in to a new developed/tiered collection system to be deployed later on the 2009 year...
As I said, the electrical problem will be put under control = a viable progressive plan to end the lack of services for the country...
The DR will perhaps become the first and only non car manufacturer/buyer that only allows the import and sales of Hybrid and fully electrical cars and bans the sale/import of sole combustion engines...
We need to address Ethanol, Bio-Diesel and other renewable sources of energy within a period of 24 months, which is when the new policy will be rolled out.
The training of the faculty for our soon to evolve Education system is underway and progressing as planned.
Guns as they are today will be strictly accounted for as to have full inventory when the country moves into adopting the new "Smart" guns policy for all. We're creating a system to track and inventory all gun owned by private citizens as well as all institutions of the gov. With the help of the FBI and Scotland Yard a central computerized system will aid in tracing non-registered and out of the loop guns found in the DR to their sources as much as possible. We need to identify the sources of the illegal weapons in order to implement better controls and interdiction in the country.
The new ID to be rolled out later on 2009, will aid the prosecution of money launderings and other crimes perpetuated against the gov institutions. That includes illicit enrichment of Gov employees and high ranking officials in their gov posts.
A new system to weed out the bad apples from the Police and law enforcement agencies is being prepared, via which any shake downs or pay outs to the officers will be detected and monitored via undercover "stings" on a daily basis...
We're not a rich country, a developed nation if you will... But one thing very certain to us is that we can avoid the same mistakes of the already developed "titans" in our present world to achieve a better society and results within our capabilities.
Changes are taking place underneath what you can see or read in the first page headlines, but even all the small changes here and there are part of a grand plan that will come to be seen as it becomes normal in our everyday living in the country.
If you take a census of how many airports were there to being with in the country less than 10 years back and now, how many new major roads are in existent today compared to some few years ago, how many remote regions have been laid with new water and sewage networks, how many new computer centers have been set up all around the country in places you never even heard of unlike before, you'll understand the many changes that already TOOK place and you didn't even KNOW jack about them!
You can mock us all you want in your self appointed superiority, but if one thing is clear is that we're not the ones with the big mess in our hands, us being uneducated and small fries on top of that...
Each single month the world invites the little voice from the DR to talk to them about the little country that could, even on the worst financial chaos the world has ever seen, still push forward on so many projects that continue to bring about even better outlooks to our financial standing long term.
The DR is addressing the needs to free itself from foreign energy imports, creating a viable mass transportation system for the citizens and foreign air travel as well, becoming an important hub of commerce in our region and possible Hemisphere, setting the basic infrastructures to move services away from the hands of the gov to private institutions capable of addressing changing conditions real time without the red tape in public institutions, so many things...
You call the SD Metro a hole in the ground, a waste of money, yet this same Line One of the soon to branch out system for the entire nation, will be the most important step ever taken by a country of the size of our economy and potential to be copied by untold number of other nations shy of taking so massive projects under their wings to address congestion and reliance on external energy sources that eat away at their GDP like ravaging packs of wolves...
While bigger and all powerful nations have the money but not the will to adopt strict reforms to their way of living, the DR lacks the funds but not the will to get lenders to loan us the money and take on the challenges which affronts our future generations for decades to come.
What do you know about changes in the DR? Nothing!
You come from developed countries where everything is handed over to you the client for a fee. Here in the DR those things are luxuries that we have learned to accept and as they become ever more redundant and commonly found around, even in the campos, we see those improvements with the naked eyes. The foreigner only can see what he lacks immediately but not what we have lacked since we were born Dominicans...
A country with a poor electrical service you say! How about a country that rightly so shouldn't even have a 200 kilowatts emergency generator it paid for on the first place!
Electricity was introduce to much of the country to the national territory during the Trujillo's regimen in order to develop the country to those same standards he observed all around the developed nations he visited them. People didn't pay a dime for the services in or around the city, for a long time. The bill started to flow much later in the Capital and well to do areas of Santiago only...
The Electrical services in the DR are in fact better than expected given how they were funded, upgraded and continued to be paid for.
Water?!? LOL!!! If you didn't have a Cisterna, water was the thing that never made it out the public pipes, save for some spots...
You don't know jack about the DR and it shows by the mountains of ignorant remarks made about the lack of services hereto...
A country where 70% of the people don't pay their share of the electrical and water bill, their share of taxes and you tell me the gov is BS compared to yours back home! The guts!!! If anything the DR's gov is the Papi and Mami of most Dominicans since they opened their eyes to this world!!!
You complaint about the cost of living in the DR and this other services, etc... Yet WE Dominicans pay the same bills you must pay if we want the hair cut, the cut of Steak, the pound or rice, the ripe Avocado and the same services private clinics offer you! And we don't have a US or EU account overseas to pay for it!
Yes indeed! The DR will do these things and much more your stagnant developed super powers are now unable to do even if they wanted...
What a miracle little country we have here!
Funny! It was a DOMINICAN MATHEMATICIAN that was able to come up with the right specs to set the heat protecting tiles to the under belly of the space shuttle in order for it to fly as many times as it has until now!!!
He was hired into NASA as soon as his personal data was sent by his professor in the US (as he attended his college classes there) to them when a request for qualified people was made to their university...
But again! A Dominican Astronaut?!? Anything is possible my friends, even in the land of the Presidente Ceniza!!!
Will I see it in my time? I doubt and don't want it to happen anyways during my existence, as the joy will kill me in the act!!!
LOL!!
