The following article presents an investigation on the current conditions of the parks in the Cuban capital and specifically of the playgrounds. These public spaces that play an important role in recreation for people of all ages, in addition to dedicating a space to the development of culture, physical activity and recreation.
reality-playground-cubaFor the locality, the playgrounds are important rest, socialization and recreation areas. For the family in Cuba, the neighborhood park is the space close to home, where children can have a healthy distraction in the afternoons after school or on the weekend, without having to move to another community or municipality or wait for the weekend for the ride. However, the truth is that this option has been disappearing from the daily life of the neighborhood.
Currently, although a program for the recovery, repair and maintenance of playgrounds is being carried out by the Provincial Directorate of Community Services, deteriorating conditions persist in 66.4% of the facilities.
Realities of the playgrounds in the capital and in the municipality of Diez de Octubre.
Havana as the capital of Cuba shows a number of attractions for its inhabitants, foreign visitors and tourists. Among those that cannot be missed are the parks, which are distinguished by their beauty, tranquility and the green of their surroundings. They have become the propitious place where urbanity and nature come together in a single space.
In the capital, the Provincial Director of Community Services specifically the Dto. Urban Furniture is in charge of taking care of the green areas that constitute 1.5% of the total area of the city. Within this classification are monuments, fountains, squares and parks. Havana has a total of 936 parks in its 15 municipalities, divided into three categories that are:
Microparks (50%), Living Parks (14%) and Playgrounds (36%)
As part of the operation established by the governing body of the activity, each municipality has a department that has a budget that it uses in the repair, conservation and maintenance of its parks. In addition to a work brigade made up of masons and assistants who are the labor used in said repairs and whose number of workers depends on the volume of areas in each municipality.
However, the budgets of these municipal agencies are small and sometimes the expense for this concept must be assumed by the provincial management as well as corresponding to the acquisition of equipment and materials.
According to the data provided by the Provincial Directorate of Community Services, there is a deterioration in 58% of the parks in the capital, being the playgrounds where the worst conditions persist with 66.4% pending repair and 5% in the execution phase of works.
Despite the fact that a recovery, repair and maintenance program is currently being carried out by said governing body, the factors with the greatest incidence in its proper functioning are: obsolescence, destruction or non-existence of equipment, the lack of benches, lights, perimeter fence and lands full of vegetation. Added to this is the lack of financing to face these investments and the result is the lack of spaces equipped for daily fun and leisure within the community for the Cuban family.
The design of this program also includes the maintenance workers, in the square formerly occupied by park rangers and which now includes the repair of furniture in its work content. However, it continues to be a deficiency, as the instability of workers is notable in different municipalities.
The playground repair program includes a toy module with a cost of 37 thousand CUP, which consists of:
- 1 swing (2u) 1 ring (3u) 3 cachumbambé 1 large ladder 1 small ladder
This module of national manufacture is supplied by the company Vanguardia socialista.
To better illustrate the situation, the 15 municipalities that make up the capital, the municipality of Diez de Octubre, were taken as an object of study. In said municipality, as can be seen in fig. 3 there is an unfavorable proportion between the variables population and playgrounds, which, although there is no indicator that establishes a minimum number of children's recreation facilities per inhabitant or per children, it is valid to recognize that the greater the adult and child population it is necessary to have a greater number of facilities that promote enjoyment and recreation in leisure time within the community.
The municipality of Diez de Octubre has a total of 52 parks divided into three categories that are: Microparks (46%), Living Parks (23%) and Children's Parks (31%). Of the latter, 19% of the facilities show a high degree of deterioration.
The situation in playgrounds is one of the most serious due to the lack of guards who are in charge of attending these spaces. Furthermore, in a great majority of them deterioration conditions persist, fundamentally associated with disassembled swings, dismantled cachumbambés, and destroyed carousels. In others, the furniture is not well arranged or there are not enough places, generating problems because they create misbehavior in children, since once broken they are used as appliances and not as products to sit on, or throw away waste.
As part of the research, interviews were conducted with parents with children between 6-10 years of age in order to collect information on the main causes of deterioration of the parks from their point of view. In order to compare the existing perception in the population with the data and information provided by the communal management.
Based on the diagram made with the information obtained, the main causes of deterioration are associated with the lack of financing for the purchase of equipment, furniture and supplies for its maintenance and repair, in addition to the action of man and the lack of personnel for the position park ranger.
Conclusions
The results of this research lead to an unfavorable diagnosis in the functioning of the work system by communal groups that forces us to consider the possibility of applying other forms of management in these facilities that make it possible to provide the population with a quality service so that the children have facilities in the neighborhood that promote enjoyment and recreation.
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