Investigative journalist Alicia Ortega presents a major increase in staffing payroll at Dominican missions after the appointment of Miguel Vargas Maldonado at the Ministry of Foreign Relations. The program, “El Informe con Alicia Ortega” aired on Monday, 17 September 2018 on Channel 9 (Color Visión).
Vargas Maldonado was president of the PRD political party whose legislators gave President Danilo Medina the necessary votes to amend the 2010 Constitution so he could run for re-election in 2016. He took over a Ministry of Foreign Relations where efforts had just been carried out to purge the ministry payroll at the death of former Foreign Minister Carlos Morales Troncoso. The Ministry had been criticized at the time as a political booty of the PRSC, a supporter of the PLD.
Ortega now reports that there are three payrolls at the Ministry of Foreign Relations. She mentions that many of those named do not report to the missions where they are named. She observes that one of the payrolls increased 18 times, and another is up 50%.
For instance, despite being an honorary consulate where no one that answered the phone could speak in Spanish to the program reporters, the Rio de Janeiro has a payroll of US$8,000 a month. In Argentina, most of the 22 appointed are unknown to the staff at the embassy. At the consulate of Antigua & Barbuda, five persons are appointed but were not available to answer the phone. A call to the embassy in Honduras and the receptionist did not recognize 10 of 13 employees on the payroll. In Panama, the embassy is listed with 30 employees, but most are no shows at the delegation in Panama, despite costing US$32 million, not taking into account expense accounts. A similar story was reported for the Dominican government offices in Mexico. In Boston, the story was no different. 24 are appointed to the mission, but only a few are actually on the job.
The Mirex payroll covers 45 embassies and 85 consulates and has 1,379 employees. In August 2018, the government spent US$3.8 million or around RD$189 million on the payrolls for the missions abroad.
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Noticias SIN
19 September 2018
