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NewsWhore
09-13-2006, 07:30 PM
Monday's DR1 News reported that it seemed as if no one would take responsibility for the decision to restart the Congressional debate on a contract to privatize vehicular inspections. The controversial contract with a Spanish firm was supposed to have been withdrawn from consideration, according to a letter from President Fernandez to the Chamber of Deputies dated September 2005. Now it is clarified that, after conversations with the president of ICASUR during a recent visit to Spain, President Fernandez himself requested that the contract be placed on the agenda of the lower house again. Yesterday a representative from ICASUR contacted Diario Libre to report that the President had sent an Official Note (#6366 of 18 July, 2006) to Alfredo Pacheco, the then president of the Chamber of Deputies, requesting that the chamber to "leave without effect" the former order to halt consideration of the contract. The latest Presidential memo is not listed in the file belonging to the contract that is currently being debated in the chamber. ICASUR president's Joaquin Alvis told Diario Libre that he had talked with Fernandez during the chief executive's last trip to Spain. According to Alvis, the President ordered the Minister of Public Works to renegotiate the contract and to get rid of the more onerous terms. Alvis said that there was a ten-point agreement that had been signed with the Minister of Public Works, and that among the new terms was a 100% increase in the number of inspection stations to be constructed (from 10 to 20) and after the 20-year term was concluded, the inspection stations would become the property of the Dominican government. According to Alvis the ten-point agreement does not need to be sent to the Congress for approval.

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