The main editorial in Diario Libre today, Tuesday 16 April, is a call for the government to act to end the irritating monopolies that the so-called unions have over public transport. Ines Aizpun stresses that the transportation of cargo, fuel and people is key to national security and the economy. She says that in the Dominican Republic it is in the hands of private companies that have been granted monopolies that enable them to blackmail the government “every time the owners are bored.” She says they disguise themselves as unions and since the 1960s they have subjected their customers to all types of mistreatment, they infringe traffic rules and undermine the free market by imposing their rates.
“But if they do so it is because governments have allowed them to do this. It is the collusion between politicians and transporters and there is a loser: the people.”
She says that public transport is organized based on routes that are expensive, inefficient, insecure, polluting and slow. She says the transporters pretend to be deficient monopolies when they are private entities in which taxpayers foot the bill for their vehicular fleets with astonishing regularity and contribute to pay their fuel. She highlights that apparently they also scam their drivers by keeping them in low spirits.
She writes: “One has to insist! Problems that we understand are structural are none other than the result of irresponsibility on the part of the authorities. If a Metro could have been built, at the price it cost, despite all the national and international opposition, it is possible to end the transport mafias.”
http://www.diariolibre.com/opinion/2013/04/16/i379438_disfraz.html