The Cuban Railway Union (UFC) has 81 Chinese locomotives, of which it can barely use 25. The rest are stopped due to lack of maintenance and repair. The information appears buried at the end of an article in the newspaper Granma in which the path to the modernization of this means of transport is discussed, whose renewal has been announced numerous times without the issue prospering.
On this occasion, the workshops are the epicenter of the transformation, a project that should last four years, according to forecasts. The Chinese locomotives, in fact, also force reforms, “since it is a technology with different characteristics from those that existed,” says Enrique Valdés Abreu, who is in charge of this project started in March 2022 with the support of the Agency French for Development (AFD).
The organism, which has been present in Cuba since 2016, has five projects currently in the country: promoting rural development, improving water and sanitation services, promoting renewable energy, and modernizing public health and transportation infrastructures. Its investment to date in all these areas amounts to 16.2 million euros.
The French Development Agency, which has been present in Cuba since 2016, currently has five projects in the country
The previous reforms of the Cuban railway system had large investments from Russia and China, but the former suspended its support for one of the projects, at the end of 2020, due to the accumulation of non-compliance by the Cuban side. This Monday, Granma he returned to recover the Russians by announcing that an investment process is underway with the Sinara company to repair the Chinese locomotives in the Havana workshop in Ciénaga.
Valdés Abreu said that progress has already been made in the structural part and there is part of its technology in the country.
In October 2022, the UFC and China’s Beijing Fanglian Technology signed “two letters of intent for the gradual recovery of part of the railway infrastructure”, an agreement that included the rehabilitation of the workshops as a priority.
The modernization of the Luyanó workshops (in the municipality of Diez de Octubre), set on fire last december, and San Luis (Santiago de Cuba). Both were built in the 1970s and their level of deterioration is very advanced, as it could not be otherwise when dealing with facilities that are half a century old and lacking in maintenance.
In the case of the workshop located in Havana, it was necessary, Valdés Abreu said, “to make a repair to the maintenance warehouse, from the structural and lighting point of view, when the Chinese locomotives arrived, which were the first consignment of a total of 240 machines.According to the manager, the facility must be conditioned so that there are five trains a day leaving for the interior of the country.
In Luyanó, a new 200-meter warehouse must be built for the maintenance of the technology and the French part will be in charge of mitigating the polluting effects of the productions of this workshop, one of the objectives of the AFD, which will install wastewater treatment equipment that allow it to be cleaned and used, one of which is already active. The plant will also have solar panels that should supply the entire site and, in addition, provide energy to the National Electric System.
There will be another newly created warehouse to concentrate the currently dispersed activities, while the areas that are in disrepair today will be demolished.
There will be another newly created warehouse to concentrate the dispersed activities at present, while the areas that are in poor condition today will be demolished, once all the materials that can be reused are recovered.
Part of this project will involve the training of workers who will have to adapt to the new technology of the manufacturers. Valdés Abreu explained that this will generate job opportunities for transportation engineers and railway technology workers, just at a time when the Island seeks to retain talent without success, due to low salaries in the state sector, combined with poor living conditions. of the country, an ideal breeding ground for qualified young people to seek opportunities outside the Island.
As for the San Luis workshop, it will also deal with the maintenance of Chinese locomotives at different levels of specialization. In your case, the new construction works will not be so necessary, since the structural conditions are at least optimal, which reduces the investment cost.
This plant, in the eastern part of the country, will host a pilot area to begin operations, a proposal from the French side, which has urged gradual adaptation, beginning with the one that has made the most progress in modernization.
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