One million tons of oil

Cuban
radar                                                                              Read Spanish Version

One
million tons of oil

A
news service from the Havana bureau of Radio Progreso Alternativa

During
the first quarter of the year, Cuban oil producers obtained one
million tons of crude for the first time.

Rafael
Tenreyro, director of exploration of Cubapetróleo (CUPET),
told national TV that that figure, equivalent to 7 million barrels,
demonstrates the efficiency achieved by the sector and announced that
three new wells have been dug in the western part of the country.

Unmet
goals and the economy

That’s
the headline used by the weekly Trabajadores to report the failure of
some companies in the province of Cienfuegos to meet their production
goals. Cienfuegos is on the island’s south-central region.

The
weekly points out that the "ills" shown by some economic
indicators in that province in the first two months of the year "are
directly influenced by unmet goals."

The
report uses as an example eight companies run by the Ministry of
Sugar (MINAZ) that show a deficit of 10.9 million pesos, due to the
failure to meet the goals "of sugar production by 16,400 tons
and to the low levels of collection and delivery of products to the
agro farms."

In
Cienfuegos, the MINAZ "paid 3 million pesos but was not
supported by production," the report said.

It
is increasingly frequent to read investigative reports in national
newspapers, or news that disclose inefficacy and irregularities in
the economy or the service sector.

In
Chinese and Cuban style

"We
live in a new, complex and contradictory era, when both China and
Cuba envision new possibilities and a space we can occupy, as long as
we can act in a critical and creative spirit, improve our theoretical
knowledge, take advantage of the advances in science and technology,
and take what is valuable, useful and noble from the world’s culture
and insert it in our socialist endeavors, in Chinese and Cuban
style," said Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuban
Parliament.

Alarcón
took part in the Third Workshop of Social Science Exchanges Between
Cuba and China being held in Havana. The meeting brings together
social scientists from both countries.

Alarcón,
who is also member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of
Cuba, denounced the dirty campaign orchestrated by the media in an
effort to tarnish the next Olympic Games, to be held in Beijing,
China.

The
Chinese delegation is presided by Wang Weiguang, executive vice
president of the Academy of Social Sciences.

Reorganization
in Public Health

Minister
of Public Health José Ramón Balaguer said in a news
conference that the reorganization of the primary system of public
health is a transcendental step.

The
health-care network on the island is based on family doctors, who
look after the residents of a barrio. It extends to the clinics,
which have specialists in various branches of medicine, and to the
hospitals.

According
to the minister, the system must lead the patient in the right path
to excellent health care; it should not be left to the patient to
find his way to proper care.

Recently,
many Cubans have complained for different reasons about the efficacy
of the system and go directly to the clinics and hospitals.

Lines
form for the purchase of cell phones

Since
early on Monday the 14th, hundreds of Cubans lined up outside the
offices of the state telecommunications company (ETECSA) to buy
cell-phone service.

Until
about 10 days ago, that form of telephone communications was
prohibited to nationals, but a decision by the government lifted that
ban.

At
the ETECSA office at 76th Street and Fifth Avenue, in the Miramar
barrio, the line formed before 8 a.m. Among those in line were
professionals, taxi drivers, and young students, all of whom were in
a position to pay the 120 convertible pesos for the contract.

According
to a statement by ETECSA, Cubans who are taking advantage of this
service through a contract signed by a foreigner can transfer the
service to their own names free of charge, beginning on June 8.

Ponder
well your words

All
the national media on Wednesday published a Reflection from Comrade
Fidel titled "Make no concessions to enemy ideology."

Fidel
Castro wrote the reflection "after hearing a public comment
disseminated by a revolutionary mass medium" that he decided
"not to mention specifically."

In
his brief article, Fidel replies to that comment by saying that "the
special period cannot be blamed for the system that imperialism has
imposed on the world." In regard to the public comment he heard,
he counsels people to "meditate hard on what you say, what you
affirm, so as not to make shameful concessions."

"The
special period was an inevitable consequence of the disappearance of
the USSR, which lost the ideological battle and led us into a stage
of heroic resistance from which we have not yet wholly emerged,"
he said. 

The
full text of Fidel Castro’s article is in the Progreso Semanal blog.