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The municipality of Nuevitas, in the province of Camagüey, has resumed hiring cart drivers for solid waste collection, as announced by the official broadcaster Cadena Agramonte on its social media.
The measure, driven by the Municipal Base Business Unit of Community Services, prioritizes ten communities: Santa Rita, La 42, San Agustín, Pastelillo, La Gloria, Número Uno, Tarafa, San Jacinto, 1ro de Mayo, and Residencial 9.
Those interested in applying for cart driver positions can contact the phone number 59926462, which belongs to the Subdirectorate of Services, or 59926481, for the head of Hygiene of the municipality.
The announcement describes the initiative as "a key alternative for the cleaning of the city and environmental care" and calls on the public: "Collective hygiene also depends on citizen cooperation. Let us avoid social indiscipline!"
The measure, although not new in Cuba, does demonstrate the precarious situation that exists on the island.
Since at least 2019, when the fuel crisis began to paralyze community services, the use of animal-drawn carts has spread as an emergency solution in multiple provinces.
In Las Tunas, garbage has been collected using carts due to fuel shortages since June 2019.
Similarly, in Villa Clara, that same year, there were only 147 carts available when 380 were needed.
In Holguín, in 2022, garbage was overtaking the city while cart drivers refused to work for salaries of only 2,000 pesos a month.
In addition, in Artemisa, in 2023, out of 26 cart drivers, only six remained due to payments of 1,000 pesos that did not cover taxes or mandatory contributions.
The deterioration of garbage collection services in Cuba reached critical levels in 2024.
Havana generated more than 30,000 cubic meters of waste daily and had only 57% of the trucks needed to manage it, according to the Provincial Directorate of Communal Services quoted by IPS Noticias.
In October 2024, Díaz-Canel declared a "war on trash" in the capital, with the three main landfills on the brink of collapse due to saturation. That same month, the government announced that each ministry would "sponsor" a Havana municipality to tackle the crisis.
Nuevitas, a coastal and industrial-port municipality with nearly 60,000 inhabitants, faces the same systemic deterioration as the rest of the country and is now resorting to the same emergency solution that other Cuban localities have been applying for years: replacing trucks that lack fuel and parts with draft animals.
Radio Guáimaro summed up the spirit of these initiatives throughout the province with a phrase that says it all: "For a more positive environmental culture."
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