Cuban pencil factory resumes production after a year stopped

TheCuban pencil factory, brandTrazzo, resumed its production for the educational sector after spending a year without offering services.

Trazzo It is the only brand of pencils in Cuba and its production is distributed in the educational system. It belongs to the General Education Media Company (EMEG), located in Manzanillo, Granma province.

In 2022, the manufacture of pencils was stopped due to the economic crisis in the country.Idania Fonseca Guerra, director of the institution, said that since January they have the raw materials necessary to start the production line, with a13 million pencils for the Ministry of Education (Mined).

However, this production will not cover the demand of the Mined, which to cover all teachings,requires more than 40 million pencils.

In 2021, the EMEG only manufactured five million pencils, which is why the Cuban State considers it an achievement that they now reach 13 million, a plan that they are just beginning to promote.

According to the official mediaGranmaIn 2023, the company plans to expand its production to offer the Cuban educational system 239,000 tracing instruments, 100,000 glue sticks and 300,000 sets of plasticine for daycare centers.

Without specifying data, they announced that they will also produce plastic utensils for teaching security, such as glasses, combs, plates and buckets. They will begin to make wooden school chairs for early childhood.

Pencils are not the only work materials that are scarce in Cuban schools. Notebooks have a similar situation,the uniforms, backpacks, and even schoolchildren's shoes.

At the beginning of the 2022-2023 academic year, the children of Baracoa, in Guantánamo, had to sharetwo subjects for each notebook, because the State does not have the resources to guarantee school supplies in all the territories of the country.

Ena Elsa Velázquez Cobiella, Minister of Education, said that the State could only guarantee paper for printing part of the materials. Students are required to reuse books and reduce the per capita number of notebooks.