SANTO DOMINGO.- For the third time, a group of construction professionals, belonging to the Dominican College of Engineers, Architects and Surveyors (CODIA), held a protest yesterday, Tuesday, in front of the Ministry of Finance, to demand once again that the Dominican State pay them the RD$385 million that it owes them for contractor services.
The organizers were not received by the authorities of that Ministry, despite having made efforts to speak with its leaders, according to Emiliano Familia, spokesperson for the Codiano Institutional Committee (CIC).
“We wanted to convene to call on President Luis Abinader to remind him that the group of engineers who are demanding payment from the Dominican State for debts dating back to 1996, for works formally contracted, built, measured, duly supervised and put into service throughout the national territory,” says a statement from the CIC.
The plaintiffs explain that the debt currently covers about eleven public institutions and that Abinader promised them during his campaign to pay the contractors who have had outstanding debts for many years, since 1996.
“Upon taking power, he tasked several officials with resolving the matter, and to this day we are still waiting. Enough time has passed,” emphasized the group of more than one hundred professionals and representatives of small construction companies.
They added that it was a problem they inherited from the previous government, but that it is not justifiable that if President Abinader ordered the situation to be resolved, those entrusted with it complicate the matter with a bureaucracy that makes no sense, since there are requirements to be able to collect that do not apply to those who contracted before the approval of the Purchases and Contracts Law No. 340-06.
“There are several files that were reviewed, but the records of the contracts do not appear in the Comptroller General's Office. That should not supersede a notarized contract, since its legalization has sufficient legal force,” the CIC members stated.
They criticized the fact that they are being subjected to an ordeal and that "questionable officials who should have paid for hundreds of completed projects are being rewarded with house arrest. President Abinader, if you don't intervene, they will make you look bad," they declared.
