Two-day general strike kicks off in Dominican Republic

Thursday, January 29, 2004

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AFP): Police were on alert in the Dominican Republic as workers launched a two-day general strike Wednesday to protest the peso's sharp devaluation, soaring inflation and persistent power outages.

"This strike comes at an inopportune moment, is harmful to business and dangerous to social order, and contributes nothing to solving the economic problems that plague us," President Hipolito Mejia warned in televised remarks late Tuesday.

Various unions, community organizations and leftist groups called for a general strike Wednesday and Thursday in this Caribbean nation of eight million.

Mejia estimated that the strike would cost the Dominican Republic some three billion pesos (61.2 million dollars).

Local Roman Catholic Church officials, meanwhile, defended the people's right to protest.

"The Dominican people are concerned with the progressive devaluation of the national currency and, consequently, the rise in the price of petroleum products, transportation, medicine, everyday items and their electricity and telephone bills," the Church said in a statement.

Mejia insisted that the country's agreement with the International Monetary Fund will improve the economy, but said demonstrator's demands could not be met immediately.

The peso's exchange rate has slipped from 32 to 50 per US dollar this month alone. Last year inflation hit 43 percent. 

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