Havana/The Antonio Guiteras mill, in Puerto Padre (Las Tunas), has lost 75% of its grinding time due to the prolonged blackouts suffered by Cuba. The lack of electricity interrupts the process of receiving and cleaning the cane every day for between four and five hours before its transfer to the industry. This has caused only 48% of the daily potential norm to be ground, according to public this friday Newspaper26.
The information from the official media details all the calamities that affect the harvest in Guiteras. On a visit to this mill, Manuel Gallego, secretary of the Communist Party in Las Tunas, “instructed” the directors of the plant to “continue implementing alternatives” to “improve care for the staff,” and pinned his hopes on granting better conditions to the workers’ dining room and the cafeteria will give the necessary boost to a dying harvest.
After 50 days of campaign, this plant is very far from reaching the more than 39,000 tons of sugar that was planned for it. So far, at a production rate of 84 per day, only 3,954 tons have been produced.
After 50 days of campaign, this plant is very far from reaching the more than 39,000 tons of sugar that was planned for it.
At the top of the list of “problems” for the industry to have this colossal delay, Juan Carlos Molina Diéguez, director of the plant, put the leaks in the pipes and “other operational obstacles.” According to the official, these problems have not been “resolved” because the hired workforce does not have the necessary experience to do so.
Other impediments also “hold back” the central defender Antonio Guiteras in the current harvest. Only 40% of the trucks that transport the cane to the tilter, of a total that does not indicate the information of Newspaper26, is working. Accidents on railway tracks are also not attended to promptly and there are also not enough line cars available for transferring cane.
The result is the decline in the industrial efficiency of a mill recognized in its best years as the Colossus of Cuba. Rafael Pantaleón Quevedo, director of the Antonio Guiteras Agroindustrial Sugar Company, said that “from the field these days it is arriving with higher quality, but not in the necessary quantities.”
Pantaleón Quevedo also stressed that they are paying “permanent attention” to the issue of equipping trucks with a global positioning system (GPS) “as a preventive measure against labor indiscipline.” Given the shortage of spare parts for vehicles, drivers usually buy parts on the black market, at exorbitant prices, and they also provide transportation services for which they charge individually.
In Las Tunas, the 2023-2024 harvest started on January 7 by the Majibacoa power plant, the other one that “grinds” in the province, in addition to the Antonio Guiteras. The two industries have, together, the highest sugar production plan on the Island, 61,500 tons, a goal that, as the 77 days of milling approaches, moves further and further away from the boilers of the Las Las Tunas power plants.
Only 40% of the trucks that transport the cane to the tilter are working
When the incorporation of Majibacoa to the national harvest was announced, Newspaper26 He explained that this sugar would be destined for the regulated family basket. However, once again the plans give way to the harsh reality of the country. In the México neighborhood of the municipality of Las Tunas, to date they have only sold one pound of sugar per person in the warehouses, the rest of the food that includes the basic basket, no one knows when they will “arrive.”
The situation is repeated in the province of Granma. On a tour of the Enidio González plant in Campechuela, Yudelkis Ortiz Barceló, first secretary of the Communist Party, learned that sugarcane planting is at 51.4% of a plan that the note does not declare published In the diary The Demajagua.
Ortiz Barceló appealed to raise awareness among workers to “concrete with superior efforts greater efficiency, recovery and progress in the production of crude oil” that will be destined for the family basket. The leader stressed “the need to continue taking measures to ensure that it is where it belongs.”
In addition to the technical problems that affect the Cuban mills, lacking spare parts and highly qualified workers, the late start of the 2023-2024 harvest predicted that, once again, it would be a calamitous contest.
The late start of the 2023-2024 harvest predicted that, once again, it would be a calamitous contest
At the end of November 2023, the official press announced that of the 25 mills involved in the current harvest, only two would begin milling late. However, when Newspaper26 announced the start of the harvest in Las Tunas, said “Thus, Majibacoa is part of the group of 15 plants that already operate their machines in Cuba, of the 25 that will participate in this campaign.”
The information published by the Granma and Las Tunas newspapers does not say anything about what the fuel deficit implies for sugar production. On March 4, an official from the agricultural sector in Las Tunas confirmed to 14 intervene That province had not received oil for 19 days, “there is not even any in the service center intended for sale in dollars,” he stressed.
