The Dominican College of Engineers and Architects (CODIA) has requested that Hernani Salazar, of the government office in charge of supervising public work constructions, explain the procedure used by the state to assign a major construction without carrying out a tender. CODIA is objecting the granting of the construction of the four-lane highway going up alongside the Las Americas Expressway to a firm chosen by the new Minister of Public Works. In El Siglo newspaper, Engineer Roque Napoleon Muñoz also criticizes that Minister of Public Works Miguel Vargas Maldonado is justifying the practice of not holding tenders on the volume of work he inherited and the economic constraints of the government. "Everyone in this country knows that allotting contracts is an ill-fated administrative scar that lends itself to the most brazen waste and that, on the other hand, the holding of tenders is the only way to stop favoritism and eliminate the covert commissions that are one of the worst forms of peculation," he said. "It looks like tenders are not on the mind of Vargas Maldonado, because I have not yet seen the first advertisement of one by Public Works."
