{"id":130673,"date":"2026-08-11T13:29:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T17:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/sin-categoria\/contractors-demand-minerd-return-rd113-million-withheld\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T13:29:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T17:29:17","slug":"contractors-demand-minerd-return-rd113-million-withheld","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/national\/contractors-demand-minerd-return-rd113-million-withheld\/","title":{"rendered":"Contractors demand MINERD return RD$113 million withheld"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">MINERD contractors demand refund of RD$113 million for improper withholdings<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The Union of Contracted Collegiate Members of the MINERD (UCOCOMI) recently demonstrated in front of the facilities of the Ministry of Education of the Dominican Republic to demand the reimbursement of RD$113 million. This amount corresponds to bank interest and various withholdings applied to construction professionals in charge of building educational centers since the years 2013 and 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those affected have made an urgent appeal to President Luis Abinader and the Minister of Education to intervene in this issue, which has affected the financial stability of approximately 110 contractors for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Financial claim details<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Mircy Matos, spokesperson for UCOCOMI, explained that the main demand lies in the interest generated by the lines of credit used to finance school construction projects, which were deducted from the engineers without having been refunded to date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Since that time, the interest on the lines of credit was deducted from us and to this day it has not been returned to us. We have a group that is ready and has still not been reimbursed for the money. We are requesting that President Abinader order the Ministry to resolve this situation.<\/p>\n<cite>Mircy Matos, representative of UCOCOMI<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>There are nearly 40 contractors who have already completed their vetting process with the Banco de Reservas since last year.<\/li>\n<li>The claim is based on Article 5 of Law 118-21, which stipulates that bank interest must be covered by the Ministry of Education.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Conflict over FOPETCONS withholdings<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition to the interest, the contractors report improper withholdings related to the Pension and Retirement Fund for Construction Workers (FOPETCONS). As they argue, Law 6-86 establishes that said contribution is the responsibility of the project owner \u2014in this case, the State\u2014 and should not have been deducted directly from the builders&#8217; valuations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Architect Jacqueline Mojica pointed out that, despite having exhausted the administrative route and achieved previous meetings with authorities from the vice-ministry, they have not received a definitive response in the last seven months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>They tell us they are working on and studying the case, when there is already a quite arduous process exhausted by them to make the payment and they still haven&#8217;t paid us. We are not asking for anything to be given to us; we are claiming what is rightfully ours.<\/p>\n<cite>Jacqueline Mojica, architect representing the guild<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>According to UCOCOMI, many of these professionals are in a critical economic situation, even though the delivered works have been in operation for years. The organization insists that this is not a request for aid, but a legitimate right that they hope will be addressed as soon as possible by government authorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MINERD contractors demand refund of RD$113 million for improper withholdings The Union of Contracted Collegiate Members of the MINERD (UCOCOMI) recently demonstrated in front of the facilities of the Ministry of Education of the Dominican Republic to demand the reimbursement of RD$113 million. This amount corresponds to bank interest and various withholdings applied to construction [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":130674,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12809],"tags":[12949,2386,12947,12948],"class_list":{"0":"post-130673","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-national","8":"tag-claim","9":"tag-construction","10":"tag-contractors","11":"tag-minerd"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alofokedeportes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}