The sale of blue produced in Cuba continues and will continue to be made outside the laws of the market. When there was a great need, there were no masks available, and now, when the demand has dropped substantially, there is a lot of supply and little sale.
Six months after the provincial press echoed the difficulties of the Unymoda companyof the Gardis group, in Matanzas, to manufacture surgical masks intended to prevent the spread of covid-19, those responsible for the firm assure that they already produce “in a stable manner and without setbacks.”
The plant, declares the administrator of Unymoda, Liudmila Perez Monteroa Granma, “is about to complete the two million masks, most commercialized”, but there is a problem: “the low demand”.
According to the director of the company, Maribel Rodríguez Argüelles, the Ministry of Public Health, “in principle number one on the list of clients, has not acquired a single unit”
According to the director of the company, Maribel Rodríguez Argüelles, the Ministry of Public Health, “in principle number one on the list of clients, has not acquired a single unit”, since they receive the masks through the Medical Supplies Company (Emsume) cheaper than those from the Matanzas factory.
The price of Unymoda’s masks, say its officials, ranges between 10 and 12 cents on the dollar, “fundamentally destined for tourism, other organizations and for sale on-line”.
Not to mention that the coronavirus pandemic is on its way out, with decreasing figures not only on the island but throughout the world, the official newspaper note published this Monday unravels a rosary of justifications for the low productivity of Unymoda.
For example, it says that the announcement of the start of the commercialization of these masks, in June 2021, when the pandemic was in full swing in Cuba, was “anticipated”, because the equipment to manufacture them had not yet been received, which ” It put additional pressure on those involved, who started counting down the days from then on.”
With the machines on the Island, the “unforeseen” continued. The biggest challenge, according to the administrator Pérez Montero, was the training of the operators: “There was no face-to-face advice, but through videoconference from a workshop abroad, where they work with identical equipment and the same raw material. forced, due to the time difference, to remain in the factory until late at night to establish communication”.
“Discarding the use of this item is like stepping on mine ground. It has been difficult for a long time to do daily life and do without it”
For this communication, the investor of the project, the Syrian Lway Aboradan, served as translator, who has already detailed Giron half a year ago the odyssey to start up the factory. Resident in Cuba since 1994, married to a Cuban and graduated in Pharmacy on the Island, he made a proposal for the tender in March 2020, as soon as the covid-19 pandemic began.
The initial idea was to establish a partnership between the Cuban side and him, but the bureaucratic complexity of the process led to the decision to provide the machinery and raw materials himself. “Many, many obstacles and the process is so long that if we had gone the way of the association we still would not have had the factory”, he declared then.
While there are countries, such as the United Kingdom or, as of this Tuesday, Spain, that have decreed the end of the mandatory nature of masks even indoors, the article of Granma predicts that “the controversial mask factory” does not have “its days numbered”.
“The lethal disease is currently exhibiting a visible decline, but nobody knows for sure when this ‘masquerade’ will end,” justifies the Communist Party newspaper, which until now has minimized the pandemic in Cuba. “Dismissing the use of this article is like stepping on mine ground. It has been difficult for a long time to do daily life and do without it.”
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