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INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Poligom Invests in Retreading Plant
Brazilian Retreader Investigated by Police
A retreader on the Brazilian- Paraguayan border got the message to tidy up his works when he was visited by the local Civil Police.
The owner of the business is being investigated for exposing the health and lives of local people at Sete Quedas to danger.
According to the officer heading the investigation of the case, Dr. Rinaldo Moreira, the company, located in the region of the international line, which separates Brazil and Paraguay, the police found several
tyres in the open, many with water accumulation, which can provide shelter for various insects and even of breeding sites for Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that transmits dengue, a disease that is becoming pandemic
and even has caused several deaths in the state and the country.
According to the delegate, after examining the situation, the Health Department of the City Sete Quedas was forced to act in the case.
The penalty for committing the crime of endangering life and health includes a prison sentence ranging from three months to one year in prison, among other penalties.
Cuba’s Poligom has invested in developing three of its five retread plants. They serve the regions of Mayabeque in Havana, Matanzas, Artemisa and Pinar del Rio. All three have been equipped with modern pre-cure retread equipment.
The difficulty that the company is experiencing with its plants, each with a capacity of up to 15,000 tyres per year, is that they have been unable to come anywhere near meeting their capacity. This has been down, largely, to the lack of training and understanding, and the lack of willingness of the State to fund the training and development, according to the Communist Party publication, Diario Granma.
However, with a new labour force, and mostly composed of young workers, who passed a training course and now exercise the job with skill and responsibility, the company is
seeing increasingly improved results. According to Paul Torriente Diaz, director of the organisation, one of the factors in the turnaround of the operation is the vitality and interest of the boys, hence the view that staff of this younger age are more suited to this type of work.
While it is possible and necessary for the economy to retread, this recycling strategy still does not see great results. The technique, although it is accepted by many, is also detracted by others. The lack of knowledge and a poor tyre use culture has given rise to a negative attitude in many sectors.
In 2011 the company only made 5,034 retreads of 9,000 that were anticipated. In 2012 the situation was reversed and grew by 131 per cent, more than doubling its production to 12,553 tyres.