People must deposit solid waste in designated areas starting at 6:00 p.m.
14ymedio, Havana, 21 August 2024 — Havana’s municipality of Cerro has turned to a private company to collect the mountains of garbage that have accumulated for months in the streets. In the area, one of the most densely populated in the Cuban capital, Talleres Delis was hired “to improve communal hygiene,” the official media Canal Habana reported on Tuesday.
The company was founded by Delis Antonio Espinosa Hernández and, according to the Ministry of Economy and Planning’s list of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises ( MSMEs), is dedicated to the maintenance and repair of motor vehicles. At the end of last year, Espinosa Hernández himself announced, in an interview with Tribuna de La Habana, that he intended to “insert himself in the search for solutions to the problems of transportation and Communal Services.”
He explained that the repair work carried out by the company was a “quasi-rescue” and a “reconstruction” of vehicles of all kinds – including buses used for state transport – that arrived at his workshop “practically unusable.”
Less clear is the result obtained in the municipality of Diez de Octubre, where they also prepared “recovered trucks” to collect garbage, an action similar to the one that will now be carried out for Cerro.
This is not the first time a government entity has hired him. Others already did so, he said, during the Covid-19 pandemic, in Mayabeque and Artemisa.
The municipality’s authorities argue that they cannot cope with the collection of waste due to a lack of personnel, fuel and equipment. For this reason they made an “agreement” with the Espinosa Hernández MSME to improve the fleet of equipment destined for garbage collection “especially on the most important avenues in the area.”
Other measures taken by the authorities to alleviate the problem of waste, which is proliferating everywhere, are collection brigades that will work starting at 6:00 pm. They will make a tour of the Cerro road, from Boyeros Avenue to Monte, and also along the Ayestarán road.
Residents will only have to deposit their rubbish after that time, and fines will be imposed if they do so before then.
The “experiment,” as Canal Habana describes it , will last a month “to evaluate its results” and will be carried out alongside other actions, according to Johanna Despaigne, deputy mayor of Social Programs in that area, who, without giving further details, indicated that “health hearings” are being held with the population.
In Havana, waste flourishes on every corner, although it also happens in other places, as reported by 14ymedio, including Matanzas, Las Tunas, Santa Clara and Manzanillo.
In Havana, waste flourishes on every corner, although it also happens in other places, as reported by 14ymedio, including Matanzas, Las Tunas, Santa Clara or Manzanillo
In the capital alone, there are between 20,000 to 25,000 tons of waste created each day, which, combined with overcrowding in thousands of buildings, serious problems with the water supply and the poor sewage system, creates an unhealthy environment.
As one example: the water shortage has caused something that has not been seen since the Special Period: Havana residents relieve themselves in a plastic bag, which they then throw into the garbage dump in the open air.
This situation has contributed to the spread of diseases such as Oropouche, which, according to the Government, has led to only 400 cases in the country, although it is present in all provinces and there are hundreds of complaints on social media. In fact, the authorities hinted in July that 35,000 cases had been registered in the country during the first half of this year.
The same is true for dengue fever, which has had resulted in more than 3,000 cases each year since 2019 and has caused several deaths in the country; among the most recent is that of the journalist Magda Iris Chirolde López, editor-in-chief of Canal Caribe, who died at the age of 33 at the end of last month. This disease is “the main health problem in the region,” according to Dr. María Guadalupe Guzmán — head of the Research, Diagnosis and Reference Center of the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine (IPK) — speaking during the international course on dengue and other arboviruses that is being taught in Havana.
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