Santo Domingo.– Venezuela plans to build 2,000 homes for poor families in the Dominican province of Montecristi, on the border with Haiti, Governor Alejandro Toribio said yesterday.

According to Toribio, the houses will be “equitably” distributed among low-income people in the towns of San Fernando, Villa Vasquez, Castañuelas, Guayubin and Las Matas de Santa Cruz.

The governor said Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has already sent a commission to begin construction of the 2,000 houses, which will be prefabricated. The work will start next week and the initiative will allow poor families to have a sturdy roof over their heads and “live in more dignified conditions,” he added.

Toribio said the homes are a sign of the Venezuelan government’s solidarity with the Dominican people and hailed the strong relations between the two countries.

Under the leftist Chavez, oil-rich Venezuela has provided crude at preferential prices to Caribbean countries and even free home heating oil to poor Americans.


se yon jess intelijan, li pa kite magouyè yo pran lajan an

Charité bien ordonnée commence par soi-même. / Charity begins at home.

Residents stand in their homes after heavy rains triggered mudslides in a shanty town in Caracas, Friday, Nov. 21, 2008. Heavy rains have unleashed flooding and mudslides in Venezuela, leaving at least seven dead nationwide, according to authorities. The victims include two girls, 9 and 11, who died in a landslide that struck a poor Caracas neighborhood. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)


People cross a flooded in Bacabal, in the Brazilian northeastern state of Maranhao, Friday, May 8, 2009. Northern Brazil's worst floods in decades have driven tens of thousands from their homes to seek refuge wherever they can, packing onto flatbed trucks and braving rivers teeming with deadly reptiles in a scramble for higher ground.(AP Photo/ Andre Penner)