Max Puig, the new minister of environment, says that he will delegate less responsibility to his deputy ministers than his predecessor, Frank Moya Pons. Puig told El Caribe in an interview published in its Sunday edition that he would also review the environmental licenses granted by former Deputy Minister Rene Ledesma, who was in charge of the Gestion Ambiental department of that branch of government. Puig also said that he personally would not assign the approval of these licenses to his subordinates in the future. “We have requested international technical assistance to put a kind of technical audit on the system of approval of licenses and authorizations into place,” he said.
He commented that they had reviewed the license granted to the Hotel Laguna Bavaro and that the results would be published soon. The license had been the subject of debate as it was under construction in an ecologically fragile area.
Puig said that some damages caused in the East by Hurricane Jeanne were due to violations to environmental norms.
He mentioned that permits that had been granted in violation of the law would be annulled, as would be those licenses granted in compliance with law but rendered illegal because the beneficiaries did not meet the legal requirements.
When asked for his opinion on the state of the ministry that he inherited, he commented that his predecessor was the first environmental minister. “He had a difficult task before him: to build the institutional framework of the ministry under the direction of an anti-institutional President.” Puig acknowledged that Moya Pons was swimming against the current.
Commenting on his staff, he explained that while the law provides for five deputy ministers, there are currently seven on hand, one of whom he said was an administrative deputy minister, a post that had been omitted from the original framework of the ministry.
He said that 30% of the ministry’s nearly 4,000 employees are park and forest rangers who earn RD$1,900 a month, which is even less than the governmental minimum wage of RD$2,100. He explained that of 70 protected-status areas, only half have somewhat adequate protection. More than 30 protected areas have been entrusted to a single ranger.
Finally, Puig said that his goal is to be a good manager so that the resources received from local government and foreign sources may be optimized for the protection and best use of the DR’s natural resources. He commented that the ministry has just been notified of the approval of a US$10-million Canadian government contribution to be used to salvage the Artibonito river basin.