Santo Domingo Juan de Dios ("Johnny") Ventura wants major changes in how trash collection is managed in the capital by year-end. He has asked President Fernández to transfer the current contract from Dixi Sanitary to an unnamed Spanish firm interested in buying the contract and to completely restructure trash collection in the capital. Currently Dixi has the collection concession in 80% of the capital territory, while another private firm, Colimec, takes care of the city’s peripheral zones and Klinetec handles industrial and business wastes in the private sector. Ventura wants to give Colimec the Zona Oriental and reassign some of the territory now covered by Dixi to Klinetec and Tecnilimpieza, essentially formalizing provisional agreements the National District already has with those firms. Ventura says that the trash problem is the number one item on his agenda, and he wants to have it completely under control by the year 2000. The mayor’s office claims that, by the time Hurricane Georges arrived, a large investment by the new city government (about RD$6 million per month) had already reduced the trash collection deficit from 900 to 200 tons daily. The hurricane interrupted this effort, but Ventura hopes to get it back on-track.
