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FROM
CUBA
Cuba's
Batabanó smothered in its own waste
HAVANA, July (www.cubanet.org) - Batabanó,
a small fishing town about 30 miles south of Havana,
has a waste-disposal problem: garbage pickups
and septic tank cleaning services are so inadequate
that refuse is growing in the streets.
For more than a decade, since the end of Soviet
subsidies, the municipality has had neither a
vehicle for garbage pickup nor fuel for it. Garbage
pickup has been contracted out to a private operator,
who makes his rounds in an ox-drawn cart. He only
does the main arteries, and refuse accumulates
outside of homes and on street corners. Sometimes
the municipality fines residents for keeping trash
accumulations in front of their homes.
Similarly, there is no truck available to clean
out septic tanks, and more than half the homes
in Batabanó depend on this system of waste
treatment. The town relies on trucks sent from
nearby Güira de Melena, which come around
once a month and never seem to do enough.
Typically, residents wait on a list for the service,
for which they are charged 30 pesos. Others who
give up and make arrangements outside the municipal
service, end up paying from 70 to 100 pesos to
have their tanks pumped.
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