Young men and boys, armed with rags, sponges and squeegees almost attack vehicles stopped at the major intersections of Greater Santo Domingo. Drivers are continually complaining to the authorities and on social media such as Facebook, Tweeter and Instagram. These attacks by window cleaners are a daily occurrence in the city, and usually attributed to young men with addiction problems. Santiago Rosario, a man who commutes to work in his car, told his Facebook friends that at the corner of Maximo Gomez and John F. Kennedy, “there is a guy that will mess up anybody’s day. Besides being violent, he will dirty your windshield and shout insults if you do not let him clean your glass.” Late last week, Georgina Musa was attacked by a window cleaner who broke the front windshield, with glass falling inside the car, just because she did not want him to clean her window.
Back in July 2017, the mayor of the National District issued a prohibition for squeegee guys to work the main intersections and offered them jobs with the city’s cleanup crews. Two months later Mayor David Collado met with the head of the National Police. The agreement was to reduce the presence of the window washers at the main intersections of the capital. Just a month later at the two avenue intersections in question, 27 February and Maximo Gomez and 27 February and Winston Churchill, Diario Libre video photographers proved that really very little had improved. It is still a significant problem for many drivers.
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Diario Libre
El Caribe
9 September 2019