MERIDA, Mexico – Some photos disseminated by the Cuban Electric Union (UNE) The video where workers without adequate protection are seen cleaning the boilers of the CTE Ernesto Guevara de la Serna in Santa Cruz del Norte has raised outrage and concern among users.
“Technical staff and workers from the Ernesto Guevara de la Serna CTE in Santa Cruz del Norte are cleaning the boiler of Unit No. 2, scoring the furnace and cleaning the lubrication filters, which will facilitate the start-up of the machine in the near future,” UNE wrote on Facebook.
In the photos accompanying the publication, it can be seen that the workers only use helmets and shovels for cleaning, without any type of respiratory protection from solid waste.
“Solid waste from the combustion of Cuban crude oil, which contains a large amount of chemical compounds derived from sulfur, vanadium and other metals. I wonder… Why don’t workers use personal protective equipment? Do they know what they risk by systematically carrying out these tasks without the protection of such equipment?” questioned user Juan Carlos Sotolongo González in the UNE post.
User Darién Rodríguez believes that “this photo of workers without proper protection reflects the work of the technical and management staff. With bosses like you we are destined to fail and collapse, and in the end it is the people who suffer.”
University of Texas expert Jorge Piñón, consulted by the independent newspaper 14 and a halfhas confirmed that the presence of toxic metal particles such as “arsenic, chromium, lead, vanadium and zinc” could be breathed in or absorbed by the skin of these workers, causing respiratory problems and dermatitis.
“Solid waste from industries that use heavy fuel oil for the production of electricity in thermal power plants produces a complex mixture of pollutants in the atmosphere such as acid gases, organic compounds and solid waste such as fly ash and bottom ash,” the expert said.
Piñón explained that “workers who handle ashes need protective equipment such as gloves, glasses, masks” to protect them from the waste.
The expert says that in other countries this situation would be grounds for criminal liability for UNE.
In April 2023, One worker died and three others were rescued following a collapse in the chimney of the “Antonio Guiteras” Thermoelectric Power Plant in Matanzas, during maintenance work.
The workers were working in the lower part of the chimney in the area known as the “ashtray”, where they were removing soot and carrying out other cleaning tasks, when the partition, a seven-metre-high wall, collapsed.
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