As they improve, the CDRs want to be useful to the community

HAVANA, Cuba, Sep 9 (ACN) “Immersed, together with other instances, in the transformation of neighborhoods for the sake of their residents and bent on redesigning and improving its work to be a better organization for the community” is how the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) are described today by their national coordinator, Gerardo Hernández Nordelo.

The Hero of the Republic of Cuba and member of the Central Committee of the Party and the Council of State told ACN that there is no one better than the neighbors, most of them CDR members, to know their problems and join the efforts to solve them with the support of local governments, institutions and agencies, as President Miguel Díaz-Canel has instructed.

“We have an official in each municipality (at least in Havana) aware of people’s complaints and opinions, and they coordinate actions, together with the Party, to make a contribution,” Hernández Nordelo stressed.

“The commemoration on September 28th of the 61st anniversary of the CDRs is a reason not only for celebration, but also for the reorganization of their tasks and ways of doing things,” he added. “Any mechanism established 60 years ago needs maintenance, readjustments and a fresh assessment of its methods and ways of communication, so we are striving to improve and encourage our members to ask ourselves what defending the Revolution means nowadays.”

“There is no doubt that this organization has been essential to the Revolution and, beyond our good, regular or bad results in any given place, many countries in the world would like to have it in these times to locate vulnerable people in any block or find out whether an old lady is living alone after her husband died to the decease,” the national coordinator pointed out.

The differentiated attention to the communities and social problems is today an urgent task instructed by Cuban President Miguel Díaz Canel, who has been visiting various municipalities of Havana to call on the residents and authorities to join the change-making effort as part of the local development strategy.

Particularly in Havana, for more than a month, hard work has been under way in 62 neighborhoods considered as vulnerable, where a number of measures are being implemented by several ministries and community actors—the CDRs among them—to improve housing conditions and repair schools, shops, health centers, parks, sidewalks and streets, as well as to locate residents in need of social assistance and engage young people who are not studying or working in this endeavor.