San Juan Comalapa is an area of broken terrain. To get from one point to another, its inhabitants dodge ravines and cross slopes covered by local vegetation.

In this municipality, which belongs to the department of Chimaltenango in the Republic of Guatemala, tuck tucks are the vehicles used by the population to move around in their hills. But these motorised tricycles have a drawback: they have outlived their useful life and their poor condition causes a lot of pollution.

Romeo César Estuardo Otzoy Arroyave is originally from San Juan Comalapa. He is currently a technical assistant in the Municipal Planning Directorate and for some time has been concerned about finding new ways of mobility.

"The planet is changing and so is technology. Technology must provide a solution to the effects of the wastes that this technology produces. For this reason, and with the future in mind, we want to innovate and help the environment by introducing vehicles that encourage the use of clean energy”. 

Replacing tuck tucks with electric tricycles, generating better forms of mobility for disabled and elderly people, as well as collecting and transporting wastes are some of the results sought by Guatemala: Electric Tricycles, a EUROCLIMA+ project implemented by GIZ Mexico and funded by the European Union.

With this initiative, César Otzoy seeks to motivate the municipality of San Juan Comalapa to modernise its road system and thus fulfil its social function of offering friendly mobility to all types of people.

"I want the population to be part of this process of changing their attitude towards a healthy, environmentally friendly environment".

The market is a very important tradition for this place, where 97% of the population belongs to the indigenous Kaqchikel ethnic group. A year after the programme began to be implemented, the official tells of the benefits he has seen in the community and how they have experienced the process.

"It has been a very interesting experience in the field of planning for the acquisition of new technology, the previous knowledge and diagnostics a good lesson in planning".

In the process, Otzoy says he was amazed to discover that there are woman-run small enterprises with tuck tucks in their care who have been more willing to make the transition to electric tricycles than the men.

For the EUROCLIMA+ project, the 38-year-old Guatemalan has worked with the municipal mayor's office and community members of San Juan Comalapa. There are still some objectives pending to involve more people, such as an information campaign to raise awareness of the initiative in the municipality, the creation of a route for rubbish collection, the implementation of a programme to properly manage electric vehicles, among others.

César Otzoy hopes that in the future all tuck tuck mechanical vehicles can be replaced by electric ones in order to have a cleaner mobility.