Diandino Pena, who heads the office in charge of the Santo Domingo Metro underground transport project, announced yesterday that preparatory work could start as soon as March. He described the project as an anti-poverty measure and an income-earner, for which reasons – he claimed – it would not be opposed by the International Monetary Fund. “These are self-sustaining projects, from an investment point of view, and because these type of projects provide immeasurable benefits to those who use them”. The controversial project is on the agenda for discussion at next Monday’s government cabinet meeting. Pena informed that the proposed mega-project would be “an open book” for public, professional and media scrutiny over the coming week. The Metro project office has spent six months studying the need for the project, and these evaluations are now complete. Several companies with international experience have been recruited for the task of designing possible models, said Pena. The team includes experts from Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Germany and Spain. He dismissed last week’s widely-publicized reservations about the Metro by eminent Catalan architect Ricardo Bofill, saying that although he respected his experience Bofill did not have all the information necessary to make such judgments. The Metro would have uninterrupted electric power, he insisted, because it would have its own electricity generator. The multi-million dollar project will receive international funding; although Pena did not specify which countries the financing would come from.