With the purpose of taking advantage of buildings that had been abandoned for years, the Pinar del Río Agriculture system undertakes the transformation of old schools in the countryside.
Only depending on the tobacco activity, there will be nine facilities that will be modified to convert them into warehouses and selected ones.
Marino Murillo Jorge, president of the Tabacuba Business Group, explained that these are solid buildings, which will allow tobacco to be well protected against any weather phenomenon that hits the territory.
In that sense, he recalled that when Hurricane Ian passed, in September 2022, there were 33,000 tons of tobacco in the province in different warehouses.
Of them, about 26,000 were in buildings that were left without roofs, he said.
Hence the importance of being able to use the old secondary and pre-university schools in the countryside – which stopped receiving students years ago – to safeguard this valuable raw material.
“The optimal thing is to be able to convert them into warehouses, and for there to also be a selected one in the place, and thus both things are resolved,” added the manager.
This is precisely what is done at the former Luis Bocourt Díaz high school, in the municipality of Consolación del Sur, whose first stage was inaugurated in recent days.
Joel Hernández Acosta, delegate of Agriculture in Pinar del Río, specified that in total the facility will employ about 180 people in the processing activity, and will handle the processing of about 400 tons of tobacco annually.
In addition, it will serve as a warehouse for another 500.
The official stated that they are currently working on the second stage of this investment, and on the transformation of the old Hermanos Saíz high school, also into a sorting and warehouse.
On the other hand, he pointed out that the adaptation of a similar construction into a shelter is being carried out, which will be a function of the mobilized forces that support agricultural work in the Hermanos Barcón productive center, in the municipality of Pinar del Río.
“There is a strategy to continue recovering these schools to give them use value,” said Hernández Acosta, and recalled that, previously, a poultry farm had been inaugurated in the province in one of these buildings, and that another of them was established. the management of the Hermanos Barcón productive center, where a mini-industry was recently set up.
