Americas

Home page

Americas

Cuban vice president visits hurricane-hit towns

31 October 2012 04:48 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Cuban Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura on Tuesday visited towns in eastern Holguin province hard-hit by Hurricane Sandy, the deadliest storm in seven years, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Ventura assured local residents of Cueto and Mayari that it was the government’s priority to restore services to their towns, the Cuban News Agency (ACN) said.

Officials said the hurricane has decimated coffee crops in Cuba and is expected to lower this year’s harvest 25 percent from last year’s.

Sandy swept across Cuba’s Sierra Maestra Mountains, where 92 percent of the nation’s plantations are concentrated, and battered the two largest grain-producing provinces, Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo, damaging mills and knocking down thousands of trees.

Cuba’s official newspaper Granma reported Monday that some 160 tons of coffee and 4,500 hectares of coffee plantations have been damaged in Santiago de Cuba.

In the second-largest coffee-making province of Guantanamo, the powerful hurricane destroyed nearly 325 tons of coffee, and seriously damaged 47 mills.

Sandy hit the Caribbean last week, killing nearly 70 people in the region, including 11 Cubans.