Photo of the day: A sign threatening fines and never trash

Havana/Not even the efforts of hard-working local cadres like Pedro Garcespresident of the Rampa Popular Council, nor the announced fleet of new chinese picker trucks: What seems to be working to eliminate the gigantic garbage dumps that have proliferated uncontrollably in Havana is a simple sign.

On the corner of San Martín and Galiano, in Centro Habana, where the waste had been accumulating for months, it has looked clean for more than a week, without even the container that was there. Painted on a wall with black letters, you can read a sign, signed by the National Revolutionary Police (PNR), threatening a fine of 60,000 pesos to anyone who litters. Holy remedy.

The same thing happens behind the La Época store, where just two weeks ago the waste accumulated, even closing San Nicolás Street, parallel to the central Galiano Street. Where you couldn’t even pass, there is a blank paper with the legend: “Do not litter PNR fine 50,000.”

Later in San Nicolás itself, they ask: “Throw it in San Miguel and Galiano.”

The entire area has been flooded with warnings of the same type, with visible results. Some signs are very precarious, like the folded cardboard one barely superimposed on a column on Reina and Manrique, also with the “PNR” alert of 50,000 pesos in fines.

Others are much more sophisticated, like the one on the corner of the old El Cadete store, printed by machine and with an illustration of a surveillance camera. “Do not litter. Take care of cleanliness, avoid being fined. Fine of 50,000 CUP,” says the sign, also signed by the PNR and with a last line that indicates: “Thank you, neighborhood council.”

In contrast, there are corners where there is no sign, such as Reina and Escobar, where the mountain of waste only grows. A local resident rightly objects: “And where are they throwing the garbage now? It has to be somewhere.”

“I think that actually these signs are put up by the neighbors themselves, I don’t think it’s the police, but they work, which is the important thing,” says a neighbor from Galiano and San Martín, who after months of stench and mosquitoes, can breathe a little. The huge garbage dump that existed caught fire several times, and the column of smoke it emitted became an inseparable part of the area’s landscape. “A sign threatening fines and they never threw garbage,” summarizes the woman.

Precisely due to one of these fires, the parish of San Judas Tadeo, also in Central Havana, was affected this Thursday. As the group explained Catholic Youth of Cienfuegosthe fire spread from the garbage dump and devoured one of the side doors of the church, managed by the Piarist fathers.

“The fact once again puts the accumulation of waste and the lack of an effective solution to this problem in the area at the center of the debate,” the same denounced. postwhich reproached the authorities for “abandonment and non-compliance with promises made.”

Garbage, on the other hand, has led to a new type of protest. In the Havana municipality of Cerro, after more than 48 hours without electricity, residents this Wednesday spread waste all over the street to demand the return of the current. As reported Martí Newsresidents of a quarters located in the old dry cleaners on Calzada del Cerro and Patria joined the gesture.

Police officers immediately went to the scene and a Community truck collected all the scattered waste.