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| Govt. refuses to take action or provide services. El Nacional |
The large-circulation Dominican daily El Nacional just today published a scathing report on the unabated growth seen in two illegally-built settlements in the province of Puerto Plata, located on the north west of the Dominican Republic, next to the Haitian border.
The two settlements were built by the The Samaritan Foundation, founded by Elio Madonia, a Canadian citizen whose website refers to him as a "retired Toronto businessman."
According to his website, Mr. Madonia received a revelation of sorts in 1988 during his visit to the Dominican Republic. It seems that The Lord told Mr. Madonia to build homes for thousands of poor individuals in the Dominican Republic, something which he has apparently accomplished, even if those he is helping are undocumented new arrivals.
El Nacional reports that there are thousands of undocumented immigrants living in the two settlements built by Mr. Madonia's organization, with absolutely no sanitation system to prevent the spread of cholera, currently raging in Haiti.
Despite hundreds of Dominican citizens losing their lives to the occasional cholera cases imported from Haiti, authorities have done nothing to regulate the flow of people in and out of the two parallel societies built by The Samaritan Foundation in Puerto Plata. There are no doctors in the Samaritan settlements, meaning that the outbreak of a disease relegated to the pages of Dominican history could start among its residents and spread into the mainstream population, making containment nearly impossible.
According to El Nacional, the two illegal settlements serve as springboards for Haitians to migrate within the Dominican Republic, with many moving to Punta Cana and other touristy areas, leaving their homes behind to be rented by new arrivals.
El Nacional's report has stirred up emotions among Dominican netizens, with some decrying that the Dominican Republic is no longer a sovereign nation, and that the government's inability to prevent a Canadian NGO from importing thousands of the Western Hemisphere's poorest and least-educated individuals into a country with a different language and culture will create fertile ground for future conflict between the residents of these parallel societies and the mainstream Dominican population.
Some netizens have commented that perhaps the Dominican government wants a future conflict within the country, since the longer these illegal settlements are allowed to stand, the more difficult it will be to remove the individuals residing there.
There are many more small towns throughout the Dominican Republic like those built by The Samaritan Foundation, and in each one of them the seed of ethnic conflict is being planted, with the next financial recession almost certain to guarantee the mass spilling of blood.
