Dominican barrios await government´s holiday food boxes

Santo Domingo.- The cool breeze of the holidays starts towaft through Dominican Republic´s barrios and heralds the government´s yearly distributionof boxes with cooking oil, sardines, salami, and even rum and the traditional sweetwine.

The Presidency´s SocialPlan and the Chamber of Deputies are the first agencies to announce the yearendhandouts, calling for tenders to acquire the “Christmas boxes” and gift cards tobe given mostly to low-income families,.

The Presidency plansto hand out 1,100,000 Christmas cardboard boxes to cost 43 pesos each, andcalled for two tenders to buy the various products to fill them.

The number of boxesthis year jumped by 200,000 compared with the 900,000 handed out in 2014,according to local media.