Ambitious Ozama river project: From shantytowns to urbanization

Santo Domingo.- Juana Peralta’s face lights up when she hears the word “relocation” as she stresses her greatest desire: “A house where I can be calm, with my needs covered and without fear of dying drowned by an unexpected rise in the river.”

Peralta is a member of one of the families that has already been registered to live in the new barrio, Nuevo Domingo Savio. She affirms having lived in the shantytown during 33 years, in the midst of filth, polluted water, garbage and insecurity.

That’s about to change, after president Danilo Medina ordered the construction of 1,500 homes near the Ozama River bank, which includes two other shantytowns.

The “Nuevo Domingo Savio” project aims to accommodate a population that yearns for a home to live in community.

The huts that face the wrecking ball have already been marked with red paint, heralding the significant change that its residents will soon experience.

Children playing, young people practicing sports in its streets, and infants running through water and marginality, unphased by the reality they are about to become part of.

Diseases, parasites, squalor and vermin are omnipresent in those areas, whose inhabitants cry out their desire for a comfortable house to become a reality.

The project, announced on February 27, 2017, aims to transform a shantytown into an “urbanization” with playgrounds, a river park, schools, the 911 Emergency System, street lighting, sewage treatment and a market, which will afford its residents everything necessary to live with dignity.

Source: Listin Diario