End to the Era of Ghost Ships

In my trips from Havana to Alamar or vice versa, I remember the abandoned ship on the coast every time I crossed the tunnel.

I was very young and the issue of the environment never crossed my mind and much less suspected of the effects of contamination of the ship on the bay.

My only concern was to learn how someone could leave its abandoned ship for over 12 years.

One day, it disappeared; and the coast seemed strange and never knew the outcome of the ghost ship.

I bumped into the issue two days ago, when as part of the 5 th Ordinary Period of Sessions of the 8th Legislature of the National Assembly of the People's Power the deputies to the Commission of Constitutional and Legal Affairs debated the subject.

The situation of the abandoned ships and the dangers it could entail motivated the parliamentarians to look for a final solution.

Lay 115 of Maritime Navegation and its regulation number 317 filled a legislative vacuum whose dangers to the nation was evident,

Can anyone quantify how much was the economic and social cost in having ships docked or abandoned in the ports or Cuban legal waters? Does anyone have an idea of the environmental impact of such issues?

Law number 115 was born out of the answers to such questions in favor of taking advantage of such resources in the economic development of the country.

With the current law the island recovered several abandoned ships whose owners did not show any interest in conserving them and favoring the construction industry and the Caribbean Navigation Company receiving at least one for navigation.

However, the law on itself is not enough. Some of the vessels already confiscated and semi suncked in the Bay of Nuevitas, NIcaro Port and Bahia Honda need a large crane (only one in the country) to hand it over as scrap iron. This equipment is currently decontaminating the Bay of Santiago de Cuba.

For this, the country needs hundreds of thousands of Cuban Convertible Pesos (CUC) although this does not necessarily mean great losses for the economy because as conceived in the law, the expenses is compensated with the substitution of imports and taking advantage of the steel and iron of the ships.

A ton of scrap iron currently costs 120 USD in the international market. It is surprisingly interesting to know that this raw material that is of advantage to the economy sleeps in the bottoms of the sea when it affects navigation and above all how much could be saved in purchasing new equipment to extract and decontaminate the waters.

This has nothing to do with depriving anyone of their rights. The law is enforced after notifying the properties and before any refusal in indemnifying the costs and damages.

Cuba is in its right to avoid the permanence of unused ships in port installations because it occupies space that can be used for another vessel, accumulates debts for unpaid service fees that will never be repaid and contaminate the marine environment.