When the architect Zussell Sarmiento Aguilera talks about procedures that must be completed in 50 days and reports the pending that have been accumulating throughout 2022, she must admit a truism: “we have a great delay. 269 ​​files is the last number, although that is constantly moving, it may not be exact anymore today”.

However, later, the head of the Department of Planning Management of the municipal administration of the National Institute of Territorial Planning and Urbanism (INOTU), which has its offices on Libertad Street, says another platitude that is not usually taken into account if we judge with bitterness late procedures. “We barely have three technicians working for the entire main city and the peripheral towns, and most of the time they move on their own, thus making it almost impossible for us to meet the established times.”

Although the general registration of entry into the municipality of Ciego de Ávila indicates the receipt of 4,819 procedures since 2022, only around half would be located there, since the rest correspond to the premises of the municipal address, located on Narciso López Street, corner of Cuba.

That is where the cadastral certificates go (updating housing, division, unification...). In other words, homes that already have property titles and that, nevertheless, must be updated. "Let's say, for example, that every five years the legal value of the home depreciates and this must be updated, or that the property had adjoining ones, whose addresses changed because before they were with names and now they are with numbers," says the architect, illustrating the multiple reasons that justify the presence of people, almost constant, in the instances of INOTU.

The "bottleneck" in the area directed by Zussell (234 pending files of the more than 1,000 processed) is due to technical opinions for the legalization of housing. That is, homes without property that, by agreement of the Council of Ministers in 2019, have six years, until 2025, to acquire legal status.

There are homes in peripheral or rural and urban settlements, which, according to the Resolution, can be legalized "without observing the formalities in their construction, as long as they comply with territorial and urban regulations."

Nevertheless, the Official Gazette specifies that to those who do not attend, "the current norm for illegal constructions is applied and ownership of the home is not recognized", for which reason the ultimatum speaks of tensions that put some how many and, by the way, to the INOTU technicians.

Last week, Zussell comments, the support of a transport took them to the town of Vicente and they made progress in the legalization that, "sometimes, is difficult because you have to measure land, interview neighboring neighbors to make sure there are no disputes, and if they are not there, as has happened, then it forces us to return, and that already delays the process”.

That is barely a sample of the ins and outs of each case, in addition to the fact that today 147 files are in the hands of the technicians trying to conclude. Only 20 haven't been able to get started yet, Zussell says.

From her department, other procedures are also channeled, although, he assures, the demand is much lower and they usually take place in the expected time. There they appear the request for lots, which are not being approved because the municipality does not have urbanized plots, the construction licenses and authorizations for perimeter fences.