A unloader crane began to be operated on March 12 at the José Antonio Echeverría Cereal Base Business Unit, located on Avenida del Puerto, in the Cuban capital.
The machinery constituted a donation from the United Arab Emirates and the World Food Program (WFP), and its implementation occurred during an event attended by Cuban, foreign executives and Bader Almatrooshi, ambassador of that country in the Middle East.
VIGAN is its original name, with an extraction capacity of 200 metric tons per hour (tm / h), and it is part of the actions to restore the damage caused by the tornado that hit the capital in January last year.
The machinery allows the nation to save almost 100,000 dollars a week for the payment for the stay of the ships, explained Paolo Mattei, WFP representative in Cuba.
The crane is vital in the production process to cover the demand for wheat flour for the provinces of Pinar del Río, Artemisa, Mayabeque, Villa Clara and Ciego de Ávila, which results in the benefit of some two million people, declared Isael Pérez Ruiz, director of the UEB.
The appointment is a reminder of the importance of international cooperation and of being with friends in difficult times and also a message to the world: we must unite our efforts in the face of difficulties, Almatrooshi said.
The diplomat mentioned as another bilateral project that of 15 megawatt (MW) photovoltaic solar energy launched on July 4, 2019 that has four stations in three provinces of the country, which benefits seven thousand families.
In turn, the Minister Counselor of the Russian Federation, Sergey Reshchikov, thanked the invitation to the ceremony of delivery of the grain unloader destined for the Regla mills in the capital and made reference to the use of capital donated by Russia to WFP to help to rehabilitate the mill infrastructure damaged in the aforementioned entity by the tornado.
The Russian envoy mentioned the Russian-Cuban cooperation projects with United Nations entities, such as the housing recovery program in response to the passage of Hurricane Matthew and the inauguration of the desalination plant in Punta de Maisí, Guantánamo.
The collaboration of the World Food Program began in Cuba in 1963 with the assistance offered to people affected by Hurricane Flora, and so far eight development projects have been carried out.