Santiago de Cuba, Cuba.-  While eastern Cuban province of Santiago de Cuba gets ready to host the central activities marking  Rebelliousness Day, the first houses made out of oil-derived materials were assembled in the city.

The group of petrohouses makes up the second residential community in the country slated for this type of housing as a result of the agreements signed between Cuba and Venezuela on social services promoted in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA).

The project comes as Santiago de Cuba prepares to celebrate July 26, the 55th anniversary of the attack on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Cespedes garrisons, reported Granma newspaper.

Engineer Amilcar Parra, from a Venezuelan international brigade working on the project, said the petrohouses are excellent in providing viable, efficient, and rational technology for poor and developing nations.

Parra is a technical advisor in the new housing project, the first step of which will include the construction of 100 houses with the use of vinyl poly-chloride, a derivative of the petrochemical industry and among the most modern and efficient construction technologies in the world.

After the conclusion of housing demarcations, work will center on the preparation of the house site and foundations.

Some of the advantages offered by petrohouses are their comfort, durability and reduction of prices as compared to traditional materials, all essential aspects in solving a problem of deep social repercussion with maximum efficiency and speed. They have three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen-dining room, a water tank on the roof and a protective devise against ultraviolet rays.

The first community of this kind was assembled in Cienfuegos. Later on, similar projects were approved for the Dominican Republic, Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala, Nicaragua and the Cuban central province of Ciego de Avila.

ALBA cooperation projects in Santiago de Cuba include a new paint factory, another one that will produce some 200 million syringes a year and a cement factory located next to several quarries and outfitted with state-of-the-art technology to guarantee production for several decades. (acn)