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Good afternoon, Casa de Campo-ers! Setting aside celebrities coming to Casa de Campo, and all the good news and yummy previous activities of the upcoming Casa de Campo Food & Wine Festival, here we bring you our weekly digest of the country’s news, This Week in the Dominican Republic, ’cause we know you wanna know about everything going on in this beautiful country!
Last week we learnt about economic co-operation, but today let’s talk about how the Brazilian government is helping us to get rid of all illegal guns on our streets, and how renewable energy could one day supply 85% of the Dominican Republic’s needs! So without further ado here it is:
Brazil helps Dominican Republic to get illegal weapons off the streets
The Dominican Republic will work with Brazil to cut the number of gun deaths, after around 500 illegal weapons were seized in the first half of the year.
Justice minister, Francisco Dominguez, made the announcement in a ceremony in which he thanked The Brazil Cooperation Agency (ABC) for its support. The ABC is represented in the Dominican Republic by Brazil National Security officials Regina Miki and Beatriz Cruz Da Silva, who will discuss issues linked to disarmament.
Miki said the aim is to raise awareness among the population- that guns are not instruments of defense, but of attack and therefore should not be held by the general population on the mistaken belief they need to defend themselves. He also added that the voluntary program carried out in Brazil has taken 700,000 guns off the streets.
Dominican labor needs to become less dependent on Haitians
Yesterday, Thursday, July 9th, Hector Breton, President of ACOPROVI (Dominican Housing Builders and Promoters Association), said Dominican labor “must be trained to become less dependent on Haitians”.
In an interview on SIN, the business leader said Haitian workers are prevalent in construction because Dominicans “don’t persue that sector”, where laborers make as little as RD$200 (US$4.40) per day.
“When construction starts there are job opportunities, but foreigners are the ones to take them”, he said.
Renewable energy could provide 85% of the country’s needs
A study by the Worldwatch Institute, from Washington DC, concluded that by the year 2030, renewable energy could supply up to 85% of the country’s energy needs if the necessary measures are implemented to strengthen the electricity network. The Institute also predicted that by embracing a path to renewable energy, the country could lower the cost of providing electricity to homes and businesses. The report recommended that the country consider sugarcane pulp or bagasse as raw materials for energy production, in addition to the solar, wind and hydroelectric sources to power the country.
The same institute also expressed their discontent with the recent government investments in the construction of a new coal-fired generation plant, stating it “is redundant”, and an over-reliance on these plants could limit the amount of renewable energy that could be integrated into the power grid. The report, presented to the Ministry of Energy and Mines, stresses that at the present time, the Dominican Republic depends on the import of fossil fuels for 86% of its it electricity generation which comes “at enormous economic and environmental costs”.
Dominican town fears coal plants will make their region a “valley of death”
Last Thursday, July 9th, a large protest took place in the Peravia province (on the coast to the west of Santo Domingo), with the aim to demand access to piped water, public works and services, and against the coal-fired plants at Punta Catalina, which they warn could turn their region into a “valley of death” due to obvious environmental damage-related problems.