The Government Cabinet met for the first time yesterday and approved measures to enhance civilian safety and border control.
The government has agreed to invest US$24 million in new equipment for the National Police. The equipment will be used to fight the growing crime rate in the major cities and in an overhaul of the department. The funds will purchase 500 cars and 600 motorcycles for the Police. Government spokesperson, Roberto Rodriguez, did not say where the US$24 million would come from. As part of the plan to strengthen the police force, the government ordered the reopening of the Police Academy at Hatillo, in San Cristobal province. Rodriguez told El Caribe reporters that university professors would be coming from the US to educate and train the police.
The spokesperson also addressed issues of security on the Haitian frontier, announcing the government’s decision to increase immigration controls and clamp down on the smuggling of drugs and illegal weapons.
Rodriguez said that the Cabinet accepts there is a need to improve infrastructure along the Haitian border in order to achieve more efficient immigration controls. Rodriguez did not reveal how much money was going to be spent on the Haitian border improvements, but he did mention that the security program would be managed by the Armed Forces, the Ministry of the Interior and the Police and the National Department for Drug Control (DNCD). The Ministry of Foreign Relations and the Department of Immigration will also have a say in the matter.
Finally, Rodriguez announced that the Cabinet had voted unanimously to declare a “Fatherland Month” or a Patriotic Month, starting on 26 January, which is the birthday of Juan Pablo Duarte, the nation’s Founding Father. The celebration ends on 27 February, Dominican Independence Day. As well as the patriotic month, the Council approved a week’s commemoration of the April 1965 events, called the “April Revolution.”