The provincial authorities have left passenger transport in the background to focus on “covering vital services”
14ymedio, Havana, November 12, 2024 — Ciego de Ávila’s transportation plan will have completed three consecutive years in 2024 without even approaching half of what was planned. At the end of October, according to a text published this Sunday in the official media Invasor, the Provincial Transport Company (EPT) has barely reached 27% of the goal of 18,000,000 passengers that it set out to carry this year.
In 2023, it only managed to transport 5,600,000 of the 14,000,000 passengers it had planned, while 2022 was even worse and did not achieve more than a third: 7,000,000 of 21,000,000. The director of the EPT, Vidal López Más, attributed the poor numbers to the “obstacles to overcome” posed by the “two big challenges”: the fuel deficit and the “low coefficient of technical availability”; that is, the number of vehicles available for service.
Only 26% of public buses are available in the province. Many of the vehicles have deteriorated “from the absence of components that are part of the operating cost, mainly tires and batteries. We lost the large vehicles; we only have the “dianas” (minibuses), which have shorter routes,” the official admits.
Many of the vehicles have deteriorated “from the absence of components that are part of the operating cost of transport”
With these shortcomings, the company fails to cover even half of the routes it has scheduled, since it barely serves 57 of the 135 in the province. “However, compared to the end of July, we managed to activate 11, based on a new strategy in the design, and we managed to incorporate eight buses,” highlights López Más.
With the small working fleet, the company has had to remove parts of from the vehicles that are out of service. The official points out “the innovative capacity” of the drivers for these tasks: “They have moved tires to a bus in operation from one that is paralyzed for the long term. They have also changed batteries this way, and solutions like this are being sought. In any case, these advances are insignificant in the face of the demand that is still not met.”
The limitations experienced in Ciego de Ávila have forced the authorities to leave passenger transport in the background to focus on “covering vital services and others of great importance: transportation of patients with medical appointments, health personnel for provincial hospitals, students from the universities of Villa Clara and Camagüey and funeral flet.”
For cargo, the availability of vehicles reaches 42%, but there is another problem: they lack fuel
For cargo, the availability of vehicles reaches 42%, but there is another problem: they lack fuel. To try to solve that issue, says the company, “the leased vehicles have been very useful for the massive distribution of flour and the standardized family basket to the ration stores of the 10 municipalities.” However, they cannot use half the available transportation either, because, although there are more than 85 leased vehicles, 50% “are still in the process of repair or legal processing.”
The company cannot import the resources it needs to reincorporate more vehicles. López Más points out that, “like all transport companies in the country,” the one in Ciego de Ávila “has a development fund enabled in the Ministry of Transport.” Therefore, they can only wait, although practically nothing arrives. “So far in 2024, we have received only one delivery with an insignificant amount of tires and batteries,” he reproaches.
“So far in 2024, we have received only one delivery with an insignificant amount of tires and batteries”
Although Ciego de Ávila has not been directly affected by the latest natural phenomena that hit Cuba – hurricanes Oscar and Rafael, and earthquakes and floods in the east – there was also “a temporary suspension of almost all services offered by the EPT,” although the company did support the need for some funeral services and “certain trips of interest from the highest authorities of the territory.”
Another challenge facing transport in Ciego de Ávila is the state of roads. The same media published that, “in mid-2023, 75% of the roads of interest, both municipal and provincial, were in regular or poor condition.” At the national level it is the same diagnosis. In July of last year, the Minister of Transport, Eduardo Rodríguez Dávila, indicated that 75% of the country’s roads are in regular or poor condition, a figure that has been maintained at least since 2019, when it increased by 15% compared to the previous year.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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