2005 – Page 204

Family, students, and friends are keeping lights on in several public schools. More than 2,400 students are paying the fuel bill at the Santa Ana school in Gualey and Las Palmas. The famous Juan Pablo Duarte school is like a lighthouse in the middle of the Villa Consuelo section of Santo Domingo. Jose Rivera, the …

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The Association of Industries in the Dominican Republic (AIRD) is calling for fairer tax and tariff guidelines for the country to compete with its equals in Central America. According to Hoy, the DR runs the risk of losing 190,000 jobs once the free trade agreement with the US goes into effect. AIRD says that medium …

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The Listin Diario today publishes a front-page item on the profitability of banking in the Dominican Republic. The newspaper focuses on the spread of interest rates that the banks pay depositors for their savings and that which banks demands for lending money. The newspaper says that it is common for a bank on a RD$50,000 …

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The omnipresence of Haitian labor in nearly all sectors of the economy, both formal and informal, is not documented in the statistics generated by government officials. They are truly “invisible”. Christian Maluf, spokesman for the Dominican Chamber of Constructors, said that the proportion of Haitian to Dominican construction workers on any site is usually between …

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Lawyer Marino (Vincho) Castillo criticized the government’s decision to indefinitely postpone questioning former President Hipolito Mejia. Castillo said that the decision to reject District Attorney Jose Manuel Hernandez Peguero’s summons to Mejia was reached after President Fernandez’s meeting with Interior Minister Franklyn Almeyda and Secretary of the Presidency Danilo Medina at the Presidential Palace. As …

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Former President Hipolito Mejia denied that his Armed Forces Minister Jose Miguel Soto Jimenez had warned him that former army captain Quirino Ernesto Paulino was a drug trafficker. He also denied on a special joint production of El Dia and Uno + Uno morning talk shows that he was behind Paulino’s promotion to the rank …

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Pedro Silverio, former director of the Cenantillas economic think-tank at PUCMM university, and current manager of the Central Bank, discusses the present status of the economy in Thursday’s Hoy newspaper. He focuses on the government’s achievements in improving the economy, and says that there has been recovery in the exchange rate stability and inflation control. …

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Attorney general Francisco Dominguez Brito stressed the need for prosecutors to be aware that sexual exploitation and human trafficking is a crime only second to drug trafficking, as per Law 137-03, and Art. 3334 of Law 24-97. He said his department is investigating the case of foreign women that are abused and are being rotated …

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In 2004, there were 13,000 cases of sexual abuse and incest, according to sexologists Martha Diaz, Carmen Maria Castillo and Milly Perez, who is director of the National Institute of Sexual Education. In 2003, there were 16,000 cases of incest and sexual abuse a year in the Dominican Republic. The sex experts urge that more …

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Deputy director of the Robert Reid Cabral hospital, the country’s leading pediatrics hospital, said that the country might be affected by a major bout of chicken pox. He said that so far this week, they have seen seven children with the disease. Chicken pox vaccines are available but are not covered by insurance plans, nor …

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