The former Commissioner for the Reform and Modernization of the State, Onofre Rojas lamented that the RD$86 million investment the state made from 1996-2000 in the modernization and automating of government offices is being thrown in the trash by the present administration. El Caribe recently covered a report on how the government office hustlers, known as "buscones" are back in again. Rojas said that the government implemented a major program to relocate these workers by training them for other jobs. He said that one of the most extreme cases of the efficiency achieved was that when the program started it took 45 days to retrieve an imported car from customs, and this was cut down to two hours. The present chaos in many government offices, the turtle pace at which innumerous new unskilled employees are working, has renewed the need for these connoisseurs of how things work to expedite the required services for consumers. The buscones serve as intermediaries, and grease the government employees on behalf of their clients.
