“Sometimes plastic bags and papers fly to my door, and the smell is intolerabl, especially at night”
14ymedio, Julio César Contreras, Matanzas, 10 May 2024 — He took the job to “survive,” but Fernando strives to make Calle Medio, in Matanzas, look impeccable by the end of the day. At 73, he still gets up at dawn and gathers strength to pick up trash from Monday to Sunday in the city centre. His tools: a worn broom and millenary gloves; his mission: to sweep, as much as he is physically able to, all the garbage that piles up in the city.
“If you want to know what the hygienic situation is, all you have to do is walk through Matanzas,” says the sweeper to this newspaper, aware that the view he promises is not pleasant. “Right there is a ‘trash dump’ in the middle of the street that can be compared to a swimming pool, but fixing that is out of my reach.”
According to the man from Matanzas, the working conditions offered by Communal Services are not acceptable at all. “We have to make do with old brooms and dustbins. It is not nice to say it, but they demand a lot from us and we are given very little,” he reflects. To top it off, the job he got with the idea of “shoring up” the insufficient pension he receives, barely earns him another 2,500 pesos per month which is not enough for much.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do if this ends up in a disease or a plague of rats
Fernando is known on Calle Medio, one of the most central streets in the city, where he often sweeps. “This area is quite clean, but other more distant streets, especially in residential neighborhoods, are not as lucky.”
Alina, a housewife living in the Peñas Altas neighborhood, has been complaining to the authorities for weeks about a trash dump that emerged at the corner of her house. “The People’s Power delegate talks and talks, but he doesn’t solve anything and the garbage truck sometimes goes weeks without coming, so I can’t count on that.”
The trash dump of “titanic proportions” has begun to disrupt her daily life. “Sometimes plastic bags and papers fly to my door, and the smell is intolerable, especially at night,” she explains. Neighbors are also unhappy with the
