The recently-created National Transportation Council has decided to renovate Plan Renove, the plan that was created to upgrade the country’s public transit vehicles. The council has reallocated the purchase orders for new vehicles, adding seven new suppliers and cutting in half the original amount assigned to Hyundai American Vehicle. Ever since the plan was created (at a cost of US$150 million), conflicts have flared up between the vehicle suppliers and union members over the unilateral distribution of vehicle purchase orders. The new suppliers added to Plan Renove are: Idelca, Santo Domingo Motors, Antillana Comercial, Brasil Export Import, Ozama Trading Company, Euromotors C x A and Técnica C x A. The Transportation Council document also indicates that CCL Peninsular, the company that would have supplied the yellow “pollito” taxis under the original plan, has been dropped from the list. Hyundai American Vehicle’s allotment of US$40 million is now US$21.5 million. The recall of the original purchase orders is an attempt by the council to more fairly distribute the contracts. The new plan will be presented to President Mejía on Friday.Post Office checking mail for anthrax??The Dominican Post Office (Inposdom) has ordered that all mail and packages leaving the DR destined for the US and whose point of original is uncertain must be sent to Public Health laboratories to be checked. El Siglo reports that this is to prevent extremist groups from using this country to forward the anthrax bacteria to the US. José del Carmen Marcano of Inposdom says the post office will verify the origins of all mail and those addressed to official institutions like the US Congress, the White House and the Pentagon will be sent to the lab to be sterilized. As well, he said all mail from anonymous senders or those from Arab nations will be analyzed by the post office. Marcano says mail arriving here from New York, Boston, Philadelphia, New Jersey and other American points presents no danger to the DR as it has already been sterilized. Meanwhile, the Dominican Public Health department has formed a committee of infectious disease specialists to draw up a plan to prevent anthrax from entering the DR. The committee will meet tomorrow, Wednesday. The Secretary for Public Health, José Rodríguez Soldevila, has also asked hotels across the country to report anyone showing symptoms of the disease.International mafia forging visas???The Director General of Migration Miguel Vásquez says an international mafia is forging Dominican visas and other official documents in order to bring Chinese, Hindu and Pakistani citizens into this country illegally. Vásquez says in El Siglo that migration authorities at the Las Americas, Punta Cana and La Romana airports have detected fake visas coming from Dominican consulates in Italy, Haiti, Hong Kong and others countries. Vásquez says in the last four months, 29 Chinese citizens without proper documents arrived in this country, ten of whom carried falsified visas. They were sent back to their point of origin.
