Amidst urgency, government votes, and a 99-page document that went unread, the Lower House revives a historical debt to contractors, marked by human tragedies, constitutional objections, and decades of outstanding payments
SANTO DOMINGO – In the Chamber of Deputies, the scene was repeated yesterday with a mixture of haste and awkward silences: a voluminous project, introduced the day before, declared urgent, exempted from reading and approved in the first discussion without in-depth debate.
Thus, the Chamber of Deputies yesterday passed a law that seeks to resolve an old debt , but also to open a new discussion: can the State pay what it never formalized?
Despite protests from opposition blocs, the 99-page bill, submitted by Alfredo Pacheco, deputy for the National District and leader of the Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM), current president of the chamber, was approved without prior reading or committee review.
What the little piece of paper says
The document authorizes, in an “exceptional and one-time” manner, the recognition, validation and payment of works carried out without a formal contract, including undocumented extensions and additional work done on projects outside of ordinary legal processes.
To that end, the legislators created a commission headed by the Treasury, along with Budget, Comptroller's Office and Public Procurement, which will have the task of verifying works, purging files and authorizing payments.
Formally, the law attempts to bring order to chaos. Politically, it accelerates it.
I'm coming back through the back door
The project is not new by any means. It is the second version of an initiative that had already been passed through Congress and was returned in its entirety by the Executive Branch last January.
That law, also approved urgently, was vetoed by the president because he believed it violated constitutional principles, was not supported by a provision of funds, and lacked certainty about the debt to be paid.
The new text, according to its proponents, incorporates suggestions from the Executive, but, in addition to including the works already contemplated in the previous version, it adds others, mainly linked to the education sector.
However, it maintains the core of the problem: legalizing “ex post facto” obligations that originated outside the State's contractual framework.
The dark debt behind the paper
Beyond the legislative process, the issue has a background that transcends the legal realm.
For years, contractors, mostly small-time engineers, have complained that they built works for the State without receiving payment, some cases dating back to the 1990s.
This delay not only generated litigation but also left a darker trail. In 2015, the suicide of engineer David Rodríguez García , inside the former Office of State Works Supervising Engineers, uncovered a web of debt, pressure, and corruption.
Overwhelmed by financial obligations stemming from a state project, the engineer took his own life, triggering one of the biggest administrative scandals of the time.
More recently, in 2026, an engineer reported that at least 19 professionals had committed suicide and others had died without receiving payment for work done for the government, burdened by mounting debt and personal financial ruin.
A pattern emerges: completed projects, unpaid bills, shattered lives.
Between justice and risk
For the ruling party, the law is an act of belated justice, while the opposition sees it as a dangerous precedent.
Critics, from within the construction sector itself and the political class, warn that the initiative does not clearly define the total amount to be paid, opens the door to validating debts without sufficient backing, and could compromise public funds without strict controls.
The warnings are not abstract. Emiliano Familia, spokesperson for the Codiano Institutional Committee (CIC), created to expedite the collection of the old debt, denounced that the State maintains millions in debt with hundreds of contractors and demanded a formal payment mechanism, warning about the economic and human impact of these delays.
On the political front, former congresswoman Guadalupe Valdez went further by directly linking the lack of payments, debts, and irregular practices in public works with structural corruption schemes, pointing out that these mechanisms pushed contractors to take on debt under unsustainable conditions.
The project's own history reinforces these doubts: the previous version had already been questioned for ordering payments without guarantees of budgetary availability.
Urgency, votes, and unread pages
The image left by the session is striking: a lengthy law, introduced overnight, approved without reading, without extensive debate, and with the opposition against it. A law that attempts to settle a historical debt, but which raises the institutional question of whether the State, instead of correcting its shortcomings by paying late, is merely legitimizing them.
Because behind each outstanding payment there are not just numbers. There are stories, some of which were even cut short far too soon.
Recommended readings:
- Contractors will go to the Chamber of Deputies this Monday to demand approval of a bill authorizing payment of old debts
- Key meeting: sectors and congressmen seek to define steps after the Executive returns the law on payments to contractors
- Codiano Committee acknowledges inconsistencies in bill for payment of debts to contractors
