Cuba compra flota de autos eléctricos para los hoteles de Cayo Largo

asi que piensan extender la experiencia a todo el pais!!! y no seria mas sencillo y beneficio que todas las personas se puedan tomar el famoso vasito de leche prometido por el presidente designado, el 26 de julio de 2007 cuando presento se presento como nuevo jefe de todo, hace ya la friolera de casi 8 anos.
by the way, no se quien le vendio la idea al reportero o a la nomenklatura kubiche que mr. felder suministra carros electricos a canada  y construyo la red de reabastecimiento. por favor remitirse a los siguientes enlaces:

Electric vehicles available in Canada

Canadian Electric Vehicles Ltd

Plugged in: Electric vehicles coming to Canada in 2015

The State of Electric Vehicles in Canada

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martinoticias

Enrique Aguado

mayo 14, 2015

Mr. Felder

Una pequeña flota de autos eléctricos comenzará a operar en Cuba en los próximos dos meses. En concreto se trata de cinco a diez vehículos que la empresa Cayman Automotive de Gran Cayman enviará a Cayo Largo, al sur de la isla.

El Gobierno cubano ha escogido esta pequeña isla turística para poner en marcha un proyecto que dará servicio a los siete complejos turísticos que alberga, trasladando a sus visitantes a través de la carretera pavimentada que existe.

De acuerdo al propietario de esta empresa, John Felder, en declaraciones al diario Cayman Compass, "todos los autos se enviarán de una vez para ahorrar costes" y se tratará de vehículos eléctricos de baja velocidad, con un límite de 40 kilómetros por hora". El plan, según indicó, es "transportar turistas del hotel a las playas y viceversa".

Aunque el uso de estos vehículos sea meramente turístico, Felder indicó a este diario caimanés que también está previsto que los funcionarios del Gobierno cubano puedan usarlos cuando se encuentren en Cayo Largo.

Si el proyecto es exitoso, aseguró, se ampliaría a otras tres islas más y finalmente a todo el país.

Coches eléctricos para ahorrar en petróleo

La empresa piensa, sin embargo, en dar el salto a La Habana, lo que supondría un verdadero negocio para la compañía que se beneficiaría de un parque automovilístico muy obsoleto y que necesita renovarse. Cuba cuenta actualmente con unos 60.000 kilómetros de carreteras (entre las pavimentadas y los caminos) y alrededor de 173.000 autos, de los que casi la mitad (60.000) son viejos "almendrones" estadounidenses de la década de 1950.

El resto, se reparte entre algunos más modernos como los Peugeot o Kia, pero sobre todo muchos Lada rusos y otras marcas de países del antiguo Bloque del Este europeo.

El acuerdo entre Cuba y la compañía tuvo lugar en marzo de 2014 tras seis meses de negociaciones según Cayman Compass, y se produjo "gracias a Google" explica John Felder. Debido a la exposición mediática de su empresa en internet, donde han aparecido cientos de noticias que le han dado a conocer. Eso le ha proporcionado ventas en otras ocho islas del Caribe, entre ellas Bermudas o Bahamas.

Aunque no han trascendido más detalles sobre las características de los autos, se sabe que serán cuatro modelos diferentes que cuestan entre $19.000 y $25.000 y que tendrán una autonomía de 30 a 35 millas (48 a 56 kilómetros) gracias a su batería de litio.

La duda que surge es cómo se instalarán los puntos de carga para estos autos eléctricos. De momento, se sabe que se va a construir uno en Cayo Largo, más otros dos que están previstos, todos ellos con paneles de energía solar para producir la electricidad. La idea es crear una red similar a la que esta empresa ha construido en Canadá, donde existen 1.000 puntos de carga que costaron $1.200 cada uno.

Según el propietario de Cayman Automotive es de esperar que éste sea sólo el primer paso para que Cuba se adapte a los nuevos tiempos y deje de depender del petróleo como combustible. Afirma que "el Gobierno cubano es muy vulnerable en este momento y totalmente dependiente de Venezuela para la mayor parte de su petróleo". Por eso asegura que "la energía renovable (en Cuba) es la solución y existe un plan de acción para reducir su dependencia".

Tal y como afirma el dueño de la compañía, los vehículos llegarán a Cayo Largo durante el verano y tanto los vehículos eléctricos como las estaciones de carga "se pagarán en efectivo por parte del Gobierno cubano".

Cuban family struggles to return loved one's body

Cayman Compass
By: Brent Fuller

The group of four Cuban boaters was photographed from the RCIPS helicopter on Jan. 3.

The body of a Cuban man who drowned off the coast of Grand Cayman in early January has been kept at the local morgue for two-and-a-half months while negotiations stalled over how his remains might be sent home.

Manuel Ramon Mariño-Vasquez, 51, was one of four Cuban migrants spotted in a makeshift 18-foot boat off Cayman Brac on Jan. 2. The men were escorted offshore by a Marine Unit patrol in the Brac and turned up in East End amid rough seas the next morning. Police said the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service helicopter spotted the migrants around 11 a.m. on Jan. 3 and that they had indicated “they were not in distress.”

By sunset on Jan. 3, Mr. Mariño-Vasquez had died off South Sound, apparently by drowning. The three other Cuban men were rescued by surfers near Sand Quay after their craft capsized.

Local police conducted an investigation, which has since been completed. The three survivors were repatriated to Cuba a few weeks ago, but the dead boater’s body was not sent home.

Mr. Mariño-Vasquez was not initially known to the local Cuban community in Cayman, and local pastor Andres Ramos only learned the man’s name because one of his fellow migrants had written it in a page of his Bible and given the book to Mr. Ramos.

Since then, Mr. Ramos’s wife Annie said, Mr. Mariño-Vasquez’s family in Miami and Cuba have made contact, pleading with the Cayman Islands government and anyone else who might help them to return the migrant’s body to Cuba.

Another local pastor, Helbert Rodriquez of the Cayman Baptist Church, said a church volunteer went to see whether Mr. Mariño-Vasquez’s body was still in the morgue about two weeks ago and confirmed it was still there. He has remained in contact with the family since then.

“The family has been calling from Cuba and Miami, asking me if I can help,” said Pastor Rodriguez. “They don’t want him to be buried here.”

The issue was money. Pastor Ramos said they were told it would cost $5,000 to send Mr. Mariño-Vasquez’s body back home. Local churches started up a collection about two weeks ago to try to raise the money for the man’s family.

At one stage, Pastor Rodriguez said, the government told a church representative that the migrant boater would be buried in Cayman. “The Cayman government said that since there’s nobody moving nothing, they will bury the body in Cayman. The family says please, don’t make this happen.’”

The repatriation of living Cuban migrants is a lengthy and costly task for the Cayman Islands government. Earlier this month, Ministry of Home Affairs Deputy Chief Officer Wesley Howell revealed that the government had spent nearly $1.6 million in 2014 on the detention, housing and repatriation of migrant boaters that arrive illegally on Cayman’s shores.

That cost is far beyond anything the local government has spent in recent years, due mostly to a large increase in the number of migrants coming to Cayman and partly due to security improvements made last year at the Immigration Department’s detention center for migrants in George Town.

Returning the bodies of migrant boaters to their families in Cuba is not an issue the Cayman Islands has been required to deal with very often, if at all.

In this case, the Ministry of Home Affairs has agreed to pay the full cost for returning Mr. Mariño-Vasquez’s body to Cuba, Mr. Howell said. However, the government was still trying to work out the logistics of when and how that would be done, he said. It was hoped the body could be returned sometime next week.

The number of Cuban migrants in 2015 seems on course to exceed the arrivals in previous years, with more than 115 having been spotted off the coast of Cayman Brac or Grand Cayman since January. That includes a group of 37 migrants who landed in Cayman Brac last Friday. They were flown to Grand Cayman, where they are housed in the Immigration Detention Centre awaiting repatriation. In 2014, a total of 143 Cuban migrant boaters arrived in Grand Cayman all year.

Cuban immigrants head back to sea after being turned away from Cayman Islands

rawstory

By Peter Polack

GEORGE TOWN Cayman Islands (Reuters) – Sixteen Cuban migrants who sought refuge in Grand Cayman have resumed their voyage in a small, homemade aluminum boat after local officials turned them away, citing a migration agreement with Cuba.

The 20-foot (6-meter) boat, a patchwork of fiberglass and metal with large inner tubes attached to makeshift outriggers, left on Thursday night, headed for Honduras, about 400 miles (644 km) away.

They were last seen being trailed by a police boat and helicopter about 5 miles (8 km) off Grand Cayman, drifting west in 5-foot (1.5-meter) waves with a squall approaching.

“I am praying as hard as I can,” said the anxious mother of a 23-year-old passenger, who was interviewed by phone in Texas and asked to be identified only by her first name, Marlenis, because the group left Cuba illegally on a boat built in secret.

Most of the passengers, 11 men and five women aged 18 to 40, are from her barrio in the town of Manzanillo in eastern Cuba, she said. “Life is very difficult there. They have no jobs, no opportunity, no future at all,” she added.

Boats smuggling Cubans who are seeking to flee the communist-run island are frequently seen off the Cayman Islands, located in the Caribbean less than 100 miles (160 km) south of Cuba.

They head for Honduras from where migrants make the long journey overland to reach the U.S. border with Mexico. Under the U.S. so-called “wet foot, dry foot policy,” Cuban migrants who make it onto United States soil are allowed to remain while those intercepted at sea are turned back.

Marlenis, 42, said she left Cuba by boat six years ago taking the same route via the Cayman Islands.

“It was a very tough journey, five storms, lots of rain, drifting, almost lost. I don’t like to remember it,” she recalled. “It took us 11 days in total but the hardest part was the last two days on the open sea from Grand Cayman to Honduras,” she added.

The U.S. Border Patrol said in late July that more than 13,500 Cubans without proper travel documents had tried to cross the southwestern U.S. border since Oct. 1, 2013, more than during all of the previous 12 months. Four years ago, the 12-month total was about 5,500.

Cayman immigration officials estimate about 244 Cuban migrants have passed through its waters so far in 2014, while 76 were repatriated.

Under a 1999 migration accord with Havana, Cuban boats are allowed to pass through Cayman waters as long as they do not seek any assistance. If the migrants come ashore, they are taken into custody and usually repatriated to Cuba.

(Editing by David Adams, Ken Wills and Lisa Shumaker)

[Image: A home-made aluminum boat carrying 16 Cuban migrants pulls up to a dock seeking what the migrants said was refuge from rough seas, in Grand Cayman island on Aug. 28, 2014. By Peter Polack for Reuters]

Thirty-two Cuban migrants were sent home from Grand Cayman over the past two weeks

cayCompass.com

This picture of Cuban migrants near Cayman Brac in 2013 is an example of the makeshift watercraft used in attempts to reach the U.S. via a circuitous route through the Caribbean and Central America. – Photo: Ed Beaty

Thirty-two Cuban migrants were sent home from Grand Cayman over the past two weeks after having landed in the Cayman Islands illegally.  

However, nearly as many remain in George Town’s Immigration Detention Centre awaiting the outcome of Cuban and local officials’ processing of their repatriation cases. Dozens of the detainees have gone on the run in recent weeks, although all but one has been recaptured.  

“It’s just a constant flow of migrants leaving that country,” Deputy Chief Immigration Officer Gary Wong said Wednesday. “There’s no particular reason for so many coming at one time, they’re all just looking for a better way of life.”  

The Cubans’ quest for better fortunes has cost the Cayman Islands government hundreds of thousands of dollars in past budget years for housing and care while they await – sometimes for months – the outcome of asylum requests or simply to be sent back home.  

The wait for repatriation led to the latest round of escapes from the low-security detention center in the Fairbanks area of George Town, according to Mr. Wong.  

“The last few escapes that we’ve been having is because the migrants have said Cuba is taking too long to accept them back,” he said. “So they think they will put pressure [on Cuba] and us [by escaping]. But you and I both know that’s not going to happen.”  

More likely, the Cuban government won’t even hear about the escape attempts, Mr. Wong said, and in the meantime, the Cayman Islands community could be put at risk.  

Escapes from the migrant center are often viewed in a laissez faire manner by the Cayman community as the Cubans are usually economic migrants and not perceived as a threat.  

“[Residents] should think about it more seriously than that,” Mr. Wong said. “We don’t know who they are. We don’t know their background. We don’t know what kind of threats they would pose to the people out there. 

“Most of the males who come here have some sort of military training background ... that could be dangerous to the average person.”  

A number of escapes from the detention center have been reported since the beginning of 2014. They include:  

Jan. 20: A lone migrant fled the center around midday and came back of his own accord that evening.  

March 11: Three migrants who had been rescued in the water by a cruise ship that later docked in Grand Cayman fled the detention center and were arrested later that day.  

March 17: More than two dozen Cubans ran from the center in the middle of the afternoon. All but one were picked up immediately by police and immigration enforcement officials.  

March 19: Three migrants escaped from the detention center around 5 p.m. They were not immediately located, but all were eventually rounded up.  

April 16: Thirteen migrants ran from detention in the afternoon; 10 were recaptured immediately.  

Of all the recent escapes, only one migrant has managed to elude immigration officers and the local police. Mr. Wong said it is suspected that the escapee, Yasmany Gonzalez Rodriguez, is being harbored locally, which is a crime.  

The Cayman Islands government communicates with the Cuban government via the British Embassy there, but immigration officials often find it difficult and time-consuming to obtain reliable information about the migrants, who often give false names and do not carry identification.  

Also, the men and women who arrive illegally from Cuba could be desperate to avoid returning home.  

“Most of the vessels [used by the migrants] are basically homemade,” Mr. Wong said. “They’re actually built in bushes close to the beach and then pushed into the water.  

“Once you leave [Cuba] illegally by that kind of means, Cuba does look at them as basically traitors to their cause.”  

The migrants are allowed under United Nations conventions to make application for political asylum in the Cayman Islands. However, most do not qualify for that status. 

TUMBAS DE NINOS BALSEROS CUBANOS EN ISLAS CAIMAN/ Video

La semana pasada denunciamos aquí los abusos cometidos contra balseros cubanos en Islas Caimán, el video era una denuncia tan demoledora, que decidimos comprobar si esta situación continuaba en la actualidad.

Crimen horrendo: Niegan ayuda humanitaria a balseros cubanos en Islas Cayman

Complicidad del gobierno de Islas Cayman, el gran paraiso fiscal para todo tipo de estafadores y corruptos incluyendo a los Castros, le niegan la mas elemental ayuda humanitaria a una precaria embarcacion con cubanos que escaparon de la isla.