The president of the National Council of Private Business, Celso Marranzini criticized that the government was buying social peace by permitting the duty free import of vehicles and granting generous subsidies to unionized cargo and passenger transporters. The government on Monday announced generous benefits to unionized cargo and taxi and minibus union members. Marranzini said, "Well, I am going to become a chauffeur, because I also want to benefit from tax exemptions, let me see where I have to register." He said that the population in general would suffer from the measures that create privileges for just a few. He said that the Dominican Constitution grants equality to all Dominicans. He criticized the new benefits as a "political answer to avoid strikes." "Looks like there are advantages to burning tires and throwing rocks, that these people have to be compensated in order to keep them quiet," he said. Marranzini said that tax exemptions should be the granted to all or non granted at all. During the previous administration, Hamlet Hermann, director of the Metropolitan Transport Authority sought to break the influence of the unionized transporters, in part successfully doing so with the use of the OMSA buses. The Mejía administration has placed a former president of Fenatrado, one of the most forceful unions in the country, as director of the OMSA buses and has incorporated several unionized directors to commissions created to oversee the public transport system in the DR.
