According to Defense Minister, Lieutenant General Rubén Darío Paulino Sem, in the last year the Dominican government has invested around RD$10 billion to reinforce the border area. He said that around RD$6 billion had been paid in salaries and social security and the rest are investments in border security.
He highlighted that in February 2018, 50 additional vehicles had been sent to the border, two drones which can transmit images both during the day and at night over a 12 square kilometer area. In addition, new inter-agency checkpoints in Jicomé and Los Pilones have been established.
In October an additional 360 members of the Army were sent to the border area along with motorbikes and last week a frontier patrol began.
Contrastingly, a recent kidnapping of a prominent local doctor, Pedro Ureña and friends on a motorcycle adventure tour on the border, and the comment by two border guards armed with M15 rifles that they could not take action to help the doctor and friends, revealed the incongruities between the billions spent on the border security and the actual security impacts of the investment.
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El Dia
5 December 2018
