Havana/The garbage collection crisis in Las Tunas reached the railroad tracks this week. The passengers and workers of the Havana-Guantanamo train had to get off the convoy and remove a mountain of waste accumulated on the line in order to continue their journey to the city.
The images of the unusual episode, spread this Wednesday on social networks, show the train stopped and several people next to the rails, covered by a mixture of bags, cardboard, branches and other waste. The scene occurred in the Aguilera neighborhood, before the convoy entered the provincial capital, according to the publications that accompany the photographs.
José Luis Alarcón, from Las Tuscany, known in networks as The Kpyspread the images with a text in a sarcastic tone. “The Havana-Guantánamo train makes a ‘movie’ stop in Las Tunas,” he wrote.
According to his storythe driver stopped the train due to the risk posed by the waste on the rails. “Several volunteers armed with improvised shovels helped remove the waste,” said Alarcón, who closed his publication with another irony: “Will the Aguilera neighborhood become an official stop on the route? Everything will depend on the next waste collection cycle.”
“That’s a big pile of garbage; I’ve been through it and it’s true that you can’t even see the line.”
In the comments to the publication, several neighbors assured that the accumulation of waste at that point is not new. “That is a large mound of garbage; I have passed by there and it is true that not even the line can be seen,” wrote Yoel David Barrero. Another user stated that the place “is always like this and worse,” while a neighbor summarized that “El Aguilera is a giant garbage dump.” Alarcón also assured that nearly 600 people were traveling in the convoy and warned of the risk that a derailment would have entailed.
Beyond the picturesqueness of the scene, the garbage that invaded the rails is part of a problem that the provincial authorities themselves have been recognizing for months. In February, the official Newspaper 26 described the situation from Las Tunas in an article titled Las Tunas and the challenging breath of micro-landfills.
“First it was one of the neatest provinces in Cuba,” the provincial organ of the Communist Party recalled then. The people of Las Tunas, he added, boasted of “shining avenues” and the severity with which hygiene was taken care of. The landscape changed with the accumulation of nylon bags, cardboard, food scraps, debris and weeds.
The diagnosis of the official press was not very encouraging. The province needed 657 forklift drivers to take charge of waste collection and had only 229. In the main city, where the railway incident now occurred, just over 60 were active.
On June 2, five cars of a train that covered the Santiago de Cuba-Havana route derailed at kilometer 669 of the Central Line
Added to the staff shortage was the lack of fuel. In February, Communal Services found itself practically without fuel for its mechanized means, so a good part of the collection was left in the hands of animal-drawn vehicles.
The situation continued during the summer. In August, the same Las Tunas newspaper returned to the accumulation of waste and warned of the risks derived from microlandfills, including the proliferation of vectors and the indiscriminate burning of garbage. Given the inability of state services, private businesses even began to intervene.
The problem is not exclusive to Las Tunas either. The invasion of railway tracks by garbage and debris has been previously denounced by entities in the sector itself. The Comandante Tony Santiago Railway Construction Company has warned about the dumping of waste on the railway infrastructure and the danger they represent both for the circulation of trains and for the state of the track components.
The conditions of the Cuban railway add another element of concern. The passenger service operates with frequent delays, a shortage of locomotives and damaged cars, to which are added interruptions related to breakdowns and problems in infrastructure.
Las Tunas had already been the scene of another major incident this year. On June 2, five cars from a train that covered the Santiago de Cuba-Havana route derailed at kilometer 669 of the Central Line, near the Cruces Sabanazo siding, in Omaja. Around 900 people were traveling in the convoy, although authorities assured that there were no injuries. This time it didn’t take a derailment to stop the train.
