Foreign Relations Minister Miguel Vargas Maldonado justified that 45 advisors are on the payroll of the Ministry of Foreign Relations. He says they make RD$100,000 to RD$150,000 a month.
Vargas said that the number of advisors is low for the 35 agreements he has signed during his present term at the Ministry that began in August 2016, with the start of the second term of President Medina.
As reported, he defended the presence on that list of former deputies of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD). Vargas is the president of the party that went from being an opposition party to the political party that made the difference in Congress for President Danilo Medina to be re-elected in 2016.
The former deputies are: Ana Miledy Cuevas, Fabio Ernesto Vargas Matos, Hugo Rafael Núñez Almonte, Juan José Morales Cisneros, María Amparo de Dios Martínez, María Cándida Sánchez Mora, María Aracelis Duarte Duarte, Noé Marmolejos Mercedes, Pedro Carreras Santana, Severina Gil Carreras Rodríguez, Sonya de las Mercedes Abreu Villanueva, Virgilio Manuel González Vásquez and María Luisa Guzmán Calderón. Their individual salaries total RD$1,450,000 a month, nearly RD$19 million a year.
Nevertheless, Vargas said the Ministry operates with a RD$2.13 billion deficit. He said the RD$7.64 billion allotment is too low and that he will be requesting an increase for 2018.
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Diario Libre
Hoy
9 August 2017
