Border project

[NewsWhore]

President Leonel Fernandez visited the border province of Elias Pina on Friday to inaugurate the first phase of the Macasias Agricultural, Fishery and Forestry Production Border Unit. This is a government and private sector project with a cost of RD$34 million. It seeks to encourage people to live in the border areas by improving working and living conditions. The project involves the production of food in greenhouses, sheep, fish, poultry and wild rabbit breeding, and tree planting. Seven houses were built with a health center and other facilities. "Our principal goal is to build human settlements that are sustainable in food and forestry production centers that can serve as models to train the inhabitants of the border so this can spread all along the border," said project director General Rafael De Luna Pichirilo, as reported in Hoy. The program includes the construction of 18 of these production units in Pedernales, Dajabon, Elias Pina, Independencia and Monte Cristi provinces. The government is building a 24-kilometer highway to link the neighborhood of Macasias with Comendador. The highway costs RD$400 million.

Businessmen Manuel Estrella, Manuel Grullon, Marcos Valiente and Juan Bautista Vicini attended the event, along with Juan Jose Arteaga, Ivelisse Ortiz, Abel Rodriguez del Orbe and Minister of the Armed Forces Lieutenant General Joaquin Virgilio Feliz Perez who were sworn in by President Leonel Fernandez as member of the board that directs the project.

Elias Pina is the province with the longest area along the border with Haiti, with 155 kilometers of the 388 of the border.

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