The vehicles the Government was supposed to provide have not arrived, nor has the “solinera” charging station.
14ymedio, Havana, August 26, 2026 – Barely two months after it was announced, the El Rampeño local development project in Havana’s El Vedado, intended to collect garbage using electric tricycles, is considered a failure. Its own organizer, Pedro Garcés, president of the Rampa Popular Council, announced this on Tuesday on his active Telegram channel, lamenting that the objective “has not been achieved.”
The official cites several reasons, one of them being the lack of tricycles, which were supposed to be donated “by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and the central Government,” and the fact that the charging station they promised has not been built at the corner of 23rd and J streets. Garcés adds “the delay in the project’s search for alternatives to overcome the country’s own energy needs,” even while having “the support of some institutions and workplaces that help charge the tricycles.”
According to Garcés, the group held a working meeting “with the project’s leadership,” after which they hope “that what was agreed upon by both parties will soon be resolved.”
“The current reality is that we have a mostly clean council, but not the one we optimally need and deserve”
“The current reality is that we have a mostly clean council, but not the one we optimally need and deserve,” the official estimates, despite the fact that the flooding of waste has clearly not spared an area once as well-kept as El Vedado.
Garcés asks residents “to double their vigilance and join the fight if they want to achieve a pleasant environment,” and he adds: “Social indiscipline continues to be a cancer that is slowly consuming us, and it is very sad that this is happening.”
And he assures: “Nothing and no one will prevent our Rampa Popular Council from continuing to aspire to be the cleanest, healthiest and most beautified council in the capital of all Cubans.”
Launched last July 1, El Rampeño faced difficulties from the outset, as 14ymedio documented. That same morning, very few containers were emptied, and only five of the 30 planned tricycles were operating.
“We still don’t know where it’s going; we’ve just started and we’re waiting for the delegate to say something,” one of the garbage collectors told a resident of the area at the time. The improvisation was evident, since even the workers themselves did not know where they were supposed to go.
The charging station that was to accompany the project, to charge not only those tricycles but also other vehicles and equipment, remains uncertain. According to initial reports, it would be built in part with funds from the 1% municipal tax on state and private companies. But residents were also supposed to contribute 100 pesos per household, although Garcés said the main payments would not come from individuals but from “entities of all kinds.”
During the past few weeks, the official, who is active in all kinds of community initiatives, has not spoken again about El Rampeño. Not even on July 22, when he reported that garbage had been collected from 15th to 19th streets and from G Street to the Malecón. That was done by ordinary trucks, not tricycles.
The news of El Rampeño’s fiasco, however, coincides with statements by China’s ambassador to Cuba, Hua Xin, who expressed satisfaction on Monday that his country is contributing to garbage collection in the Island’s capital. “Chinese electric tricycles are helping clean Havana,” he wrote on his social media accounts.
In light of what Garcés says, there are not enough vehicles for everything.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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