Quiet cuts to foreign service payroll

Santo Domingo.- President DaniloMedina says that the fact that the country’s foreign and diplomatic service payrollhas many employees does not amount to an act of corruption, while revealingthat the government is working towards rationalizing this payroll, which hesaid did was not linked to just one party but was shared.

“We are working on this, what happensis that there has not been a lot of noise, but in these past 30 or 40 days morethan a thousand have left. We are working towards this and hope to finishbefore the end of this year, but we are working”, declared the president.

Medina said that 700 employees hadbeen removed from the foreign service, although he did not specify whether theywere consuls, ambassadors or others.

There has been widespread criticismfrom some quarters, demanding staff reductions in the foreign and diplomaticservice, but after two years of government nothing had yet been done to dealwith the matter.

The president clarified that theseemployees did not belong to just one party, as has been suggested in somequarters, and in contrast he said that this is a shared government.

The Ministry of Foreign Relations isheaded by Carlos Morales Troncoso, who recently resigned the presidency of the ChristianSocial Reformist Party (PRSC) and has held the post since the Leonel Fernándezadministration as a result of an alliance between the two political parties datingback several years.