Ciego de Ávila citizens denounce the impact of the blockade on recycling activity (+Photos)

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Empresa de Recuperación de Materias Primas ERMP de Ciego de Ávila 1

The workers of the Raw Materials Recovery Company (ERMP) in Ciego de Ávila, denounced the impact of the US blockade against Cuba in the management of their entity, where it hinders the actions of purchase, transfer, processing and sales directed to the national markets and overall.

Manuel Rieche González, general director, expressed that this hostile policy hits them in the "spinal cord", taking into account that the activities depend on means of transportation, heavy equipment, fuel and availability of electricity, to name just a few of the most representative examples.

Restrictions associated with the blockade and difficulties with the vessels have prevented obtaining a crane acquired in China, more than two years ago, with the aim of speeding up and humanizing the movement of recycled metals in the company's yard, he said.

Manuel Rieche González director general de la Empresa de Recuperación de Materias Primas ERMP de Ciego de Ávila 11

Currently, he assumed, these operations are carried out with a backhoe converted into a crane by innovators, in a way that facilitates the mobility of recycled products and cargo operations for the trains, including tons of steel destined for the bar factories for the Home building.

Vintage equipment for pressing raw materials also requires the dedication of inventors to maintain vitality; obsolescence affects the quality of compression to make sales viable and increase storage capacity, and threatens efficiency as they are high consumers of electricity, he added.

Empresa de Recuperación de Materias Primas ERMP de Ciego de Ávila 9

The lack of fossil fuels makes mobile purchases more complex, however, the acquisition of modern electric tricycles for the base business units of the ten municipalities facilitates recycling in neighborhoods and communities, he added.

The steel shot has limitations due to the shortage of diesel, added to the deterioration of the trains and the poor condition of the gondolas to transport the scrap through the railway, as a result of the years of exploitation and the lack of implements to repair, he continued.

The substitution of these means of transport and acquisition of parts in the international market is difficult given the obstacles imposed by the US economic blockade, he condemned.

Empresa de Recuperación de Materias Primas ERMP de Ciego de Ávila 7

The blockade also hampers the execution of investment processes in the sugar industries, which reduces the generation of important waste such as steel, he said.

Rieche González exemplified that not selling steel in a month implies losing more than one million pesos; therefore, there is a direct negative impact on the entity's finances.

However, the company is "alive", positioned in the market and remains among the outstanding in the province and the country, with revenues exceeding 46 million pesos in the January period? July of the current year and utilities that ensure the quarterly payment of utilities to workers, he affirmed.

Empresa de Recuperación de Materias Primas ERMP de Ciego de Ávila 6

Kendry Mastrapa Diéguez, deputy director of the ERMP, explained that of the total earnings, 21.6 million pesos derived from exports of non-ferrous metals, plastics, paper, cardboard, and containers of various materials, fundamentally, to countries of the European Union.

Likewise, the needs of national entities contemplated by non-state forms of management (MSMEs, local development projects and self-employed workers) dedicated to the manufacture of food, beverages, medicines, construction materials and industrial products are met, he argued.

Empresa de Recuperación de Materias Primas ERMP de Ciego de Ávila 8

Despite the economic effects caused by the blockade, the ERMP has allocated more than two million pesos to improve the quality of life of people, families, neighborhoods and communities in vulnerable conditions, the repair of family doctor's offices, schools, parks and other public spaces.

More than one and a half million pesos were invested in the renovation of the Pediatric Gastroenterology room of the Doctor Antonio Luaces Iraola Provincial General Teaching Hospital, after joining the political movement Ciego de Ávila Heartbeat, which promotes transformations in different spaces of the provincial geography.