Santo Domingo. – There are an estimated 20,000 mostly undocumented Haitian immigrants in the Bavaro-Punta Cana (east) area of the Dominican Republic as of December and around 3,000 more have arrived so far this year, an influx and accompanying sprawl that concerns the area’s hoteliers.

The figures are from the Bavaro-Punta Cana Hotels and Tourism Projects Association, whose president Ernesto Veloz said it keeps a record of the foreigners, and expresses anger when he talks about the topic.

"We opened an Immigration Agency office to allegedly control and manage the undocumented Haitians but it has never carried out its mission. There’s new furniture and a bus that hasn’t done its first trip. Nothing has worked,” he said

Veloz, like other hoteliers, fears the situation will get out of control in the tourism region, "the country’s number one and one of the Caribbean’s three most important."

Faced with what he describes as Immigration’s apathy, hoteliers are trying to establish controls of the Haitians who work in the construction of tourism projects, including malaria control program for Haitians hired as construction workers and also provide then with ID cards.

Veloz said their efforts include a lab to prevent an outbreak of the disease with blood samples taken regularly from Haitian workers, and fumigation of construction areas. "The problem we have is that we can monitor or respond to the Haitians who are in hotel construction, but those outside or informal, those who have no work, those Haitians who don’t know where they live, we can’t locate. The streets are filled at all hours, day or night.”

He said although many Haitians work in construction, the majority are involved in other activities or loiter around the area. "Those who aren’t working are vagrants. You see them day and night. It's gotten to the point that when you walk through some places you see signs in patois (Creole).”

Veloz said the hotel industry recognizes the benefits of the Haitian workforce, including the fact that many speak English, French and Spanish. "Of course, in partly it’s our fault. The hoteliers are the ones who hire Haitians. But what happens when they leave the work sites, we automatically lose control of these people, and Haitians also come who aren’t working in construction, coming to do business. Here when its payday you see fried food venders, flea markets, who come from Haiti to sell here.”

The Haitians also generate a dynamic economic movement among themselves but the areas where those workers live are overcrowded, which also concerns hoteliers as to the effects as a tourism attraction. "They don’t leave one peso here. They send money to their families or spend on prostitutes and rum. You will you never see a Haitian in a formal business, in a restaurant, or anything like that."

"Bavaro is totally decayed. In Punta Cana there’s another concept because there’s a vision of what they to be done and they do it. But not here," Veloz said, and asks” What has the government given to Punta Cana? Nothing. What Punta Cana has done, it has done alone, we are a sort of orphan, orphans of living parents, because the government is the pappy, and does nothing."

SOURCE: hoy.com.do