La Zurza families await relocation to decent housing

SANTO DOMINGO.-Some 50 families from Hoyo de La Zurza, in the North Zone of the Capital, which were provisionally located on the banks of the Isabela River to make way for the construction of the Santo Domingo Metro, ask the Government to comply the promise of a decent home.

Those affected are part of a group of 171 families who lived in subhuman conditions and were evicted from the river bank as a result of a flood that washed away their belongings while giving way to the river avenue, which was paralyzed.

From 2007 to date, the houses that lack basic services have been falling apart, at the time of being victims of dust, river pollution, as well as marginalization.

"We cry out for justice for the families who gave their homes to the authorities of the Office for the Reordering of Transportation (OPRET), since they required their spaces for the work of the first line of the Santo Domingo Metro and today they are abandoned," he said. Víctor Manuel Portoreal, member of the La Zurza Development Management Committee.

He said that the families were registered and endowed with a letter of guarantee for a decent home from the Dominican State: 81 received apartments, 50 were housed in temporary houses and the rest wandered between family members and rented houses, and they have not even been compensated.

“The temporary houses are converted into common barracks due to the level of deterioration they present and the passing of time, the high level of unhealthy conditions for their inhabitants, they cannot resist; rains, nor winds, which is why it has generated a collective fear for the current hurricane season ”, deplored Víctor Manuel Portoreal.

They expect support

The community members do not lose hope that the Government will come to their aid, since they were hopeful of being favored with their relocation as a result of the construction of the Mirador Norte-La Zurza Wastewater Treatment Plant station.

"We feel very concerned, since we had the hope that the day that President Danilo Medina and Alejandro Montas visited the work, we would receive an answer to our situation."

They recalled that on August 17, 2012 they deposited a letter in the Presidential Palace, in which they requested to be taken into account in the housing projects that will be approved in their first 100 days of their government.

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