MADRID, Spain.- A large number of Cubans currently live in houses with dirt floors, a problem that the regime does not provide a solution to despite its annual plans in this regard, which are being postponed year after year.
“Among the challenges faced by the general housing policy in Cuba, the insufficient progress that the program to eradicate dirt floors in the country has shown in the last two years stands out,” the official newspaper acknowledged this week. Granma.
In Granma province alone, 35,834 homes had dirt floors at the beginning of 2022. The Government had proposed throughout the year to eradicate this problem for 4,439 homes; and not even this tiny figure was fulfilled.
Of those 4,439, it was only possible to remove the dirt floor in 1,462; of them 1,110 by their own effort, and only 352 by state means.
According to the Cuban authorities, the impossibility of solving this problem is due to the significant reduction in the production of various construction materials and financial impacts.
As he told Granma Yesser Izaguirre Ojeda, provincial director of Housing, “we are facing a very tense year in the production of floors.”
“In addition to the low availability of cement, it has also had to work with a budget that does not exceed 50% of the comprehensive financing that was initially provided,” he added.
The owner also pointed out that the alternatives such as the use of cement extenders and the manufacture of floors with brick, wood and marble trim were insufficient.
“Despite the availability of some of these resources in the municipalities themselves, these variants are still not sufficiently exploited, neither by state entities, which can produce them, nor by the clients themselves, who often show reluctance to opt for them” , said Izaguirre Ojeda.
For her part, Sulaida Ferrales Cover, director of the company that produces Construction Materials in Granma, pointed out that “to produce floors and eradicate earthen floors, cement is required, even if it is to join when it comes to variants with other materials”; but “of an initial plan of 5,880 tons of P350 resistance cement, only 2,849 tons have been received to date, which represents 48%.”
After this analysis, the managers state that “reality demands greater efficiency, control and agility in productive efforts, which result in new possibilities for well-being”, however, they did not offer real solutions in the short or long term.
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