Esteban Pupo had the omen that his luck would not be different. However, reality overcame his fears. When he arrived, there was nothing to fix. Only the walls of the bathroom were standing, the rest was a sea of rubble that became a knot in his throat and loosened his legs.
On the same day, he improvised a one-bedroom home with a kitchen and repaired as he could the bathroom. In the few meters that remained of his home, his family started to live again and they looked at the same walls for more than seven years, using the bed as a table or a closet, even as an armchair.
Hurricane Ike caused millionaire damages
The building of new houses where once the Algeria Libre Sugar Mill was, on Manatí municipality, ended the nightmare of Esteban. He says that at first his apartment on the third floor seemed like a dream that he was afraid of waking up. He tells that he literally woke up at midnight while he was thinking that he was in his "poor little house" again and the moving was just not true.
September 8th, 2008 was also one of the saddest days in the life of Roxana Fonseca. Like Esteban, the Ike's excesses tore a good part inside her chest. She lost the property where she lived with her two daughters. With nothing else to do there, she went with her family to a temporary facility.
Roxana resided before the catastrophe in a masonry house with guano roof in Yeso 1 de Vázquez town, belonging to Puerto Padre Municipality. She worked in the Prison Bodies of the Ministry of Interior (known as Minint by its Spanish acronyms).
She confesses that "actually, in my constituency they did not take care of me enough. The Ministry of Interior borrowed me a house some time, but then that residence was granted to an officer. The popular council of Vázquez never benefited me.
"When I left my old neighborhood, they removed my name from the list of victims, they dropped me and if any material was destined for my case, I never know it. I went to the Government of the municipality to which I belong, I dispatched with the vice president, they looked for me and, of course, I did not appear on the papers. I went to see the head of the Department of Housing, I told him my story; I carried witnesses who could corroborate what I said, but those evidences did not solve anything."
Currently, Roxana works as a Security and Physical Protection specialist in the Provincial Agricultural Company, where she finally managed to be included in the plans for the construction of a house by the entity, as she is still in an illegal domicile in the suburban town of Río Potrero.
She laments in the microphone of 26 the fact of being a victim of bureaucracy "that hinders us and reduces the brightness of social works." She hopes that her experience will not be repeated, because "it is very sad to walk, for more than a decade, wandering through life."
OVER 10 YEARS OLD
Esteban and Roxana tell just two stories of those ones that Ike colored with more or less misfortune. In September 2008, the route of that hurricane affected more than 86 thousand dwellings in the province, around thirteen thousand were destroyed and the rest partially.
Hurricane Ike covered more than half of Cuba, on September 9, 2008. https://t.co/4IMQDeGPZl pic.twitter.com/dRcUzbu49j
— Kifri (@l1ght3n) June 14, 2016
After 11 years, three thousand 300 families do not have a decent home and three thousand 779 present some type of damage, for a total of seven thousand 183 families that have failed to overcome the atmospheric event.
Héctor Rodríguez, director of Housing in the territory, assured 26 that in all the calendars a certain number of these victims are incorporated in the projection of the sector.
The manager says that "The state plan for 2019 is focused in the building of 607 houses, to date 400 are finished and from that group, 377 are effected by weather phenomena."
"We have today a policy to be fulfilled in 10 years, with a significant amount of housing, although the government asks us to finish some houses before 2021, in the case of those affected by weather events.
"We have established a strategy to start with residences that do not need relocation. They are those that were affected in a certain place and people do not want to leave.
"We have called it "Operation Zapata", and as part of this it has been decided to deliver resources so that the family itself founds the foundation of their home. Then, with the local production of materials, we grant the bricks, the alternative cement, until it is taken to a level in which we can make the roof and finish it.
"We are following up on those people who do not have a decent home for 11 years, without receiving a resource. That was a request made by President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez when he came to Las Tunas."
SETTLEMENTS
The promotion of the construction of houses by the popular movement is one of the factors that have most influenced the Balcony of Eastern Cuba has 15 new neighborhoods.
The director of Housing here explains that in the settlements, a thousand 309 homes were built. "We opened another in this city, it will be called Voluntad Tunera , which takes advantage of facilities that were built, but resulted in investments that were never completed, some with 20 years.
"We did a study with the National Company of Applied Investigations (known as ENIA by its Spanish acronyms) and we are going to use two buildings located at the road towards Jobabo municipality. According to the microlocation that gave us Urban Planning, about 7,763 houses may be built, not counting the buildings made. These houses will have different types.
"We gave the possibility of joining the organizations that want to get involved in construction, part of the houses will be for their workers and another for the victims. Gelma, Alastor, the Agriculture sector and Labiofam are already there.
WHO WATCHES FOR QUALITY?
The neighbors of the Eucalyptus settlement, on Manatí soil, assure that the 10 houses exhibit cracked walls, although its completion does not have much more than two years. One of the owners, known by La Santiaguera, shared her concern about it and expressed her dissatisfaction with the fact that the settlement has no hydraulic system and they find it very difficult the supply of water.
Midiala Reyes, resident at the El Venero settlement, the first of its kind in the northern municipality, comments that both the two story houses and the three story houses of the place suffer from serious water leaks, which sometimes, conduct electricity and they have taken scares the residents.
They are just two examples of many bungling in this type of works and so many others, under state sponsorship. With respect to quality, Héctor Rodríguez confirms that they know that it has not been guaranteed as it should, which is partly due to a misuse of the scarce resources that the country has, as some of these settlements with a year of completion. They already show walls without , water leaks, problems with the pipes and the veneers.
The director of Housing reiterates that "we must ensure that the dosage of the products to be used is correct. Practice has shown that the builder, if nobody controls him, can mix three bags of cement where five must go and then the poor quality of the buildings begins there. Supervision is vital, afterwards, this is a plaster that is not done well and it falls with the rains in a short time.
"We have to guarantee civil control from the beginning of the work until they finish, and keep a file with all the entries. We have proposed to locate a full-time investor so that the projects are not oversized, but executed as planned and for the proper use of materials, whether they are locally produced or from any other source."
HAVE A WORTHY HOME
Las Tunas has today more than 182 thousand homes in its housing fund. The 62 percent is classified as good, 21 percent as bad and the rest is considered as regular. The plan for 10 years of the Housing Policy in the province is aimed at changing the portion that is valued as bad and that represents about 17 thousand houses.
Even when the results at the national level place the territory among the best for their performance, it is clear that much remains to be done here. The more than seven thousand families injured from weather events, whose houses are not built to date, are a reliable evidence.
With the house subsidies granted, the foreseen plans are breached due to the lack of cement in the months of April, May and June. The population complains that there is no supply in the stores of Commerce and the beneficiaries, who are supplemented by that way, have run out of resources to advance in the constructions.
Like Roxana, many people have failed to solve their problems in the corresponding ways and have been victims of bad practices and indolence.
After 11 years of Ike, the challenge of improving the housing fund and eliminating bureaucratic obstacles continues as well as setting foot on the ground at the time of developing future plans and executing the works without hurry or bungling. It is also necessary to improve the mechanisms so that those who still wait, can materialize the desire to have their own and dignified housing.
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