Forklift drivers and pedicab drivers in Old Havana denounce the growing siege they suffer from inspectors from the Comprehensive Supervision Directorate (DIS) who - according to what they claim - are indiscriminately increasing the imposition of fines to the self-employed in collusion with the Police.
“How long are we going to allow these things in this country, with the situation so critical, with the big problems that these people have? "They are working to make this Government fall because every day they irritate the people more," he said in statements to Cubanet an elderly man, a pedicab driver, who claims to have been fined 500 pesos just for stopping for a few minutes to greet a person.
“The Police are also lending themselves to that, to support the inspectors who are coming here to give fines to people, people who have documents and who pay their taxes. "They don't respect anyone.", the same self-employed person complained.
The interviewee considers “unfair and arbitrary” the imposition of the fine by an official from the Comprehensive Supervision Directorate of the Habana Vieja municipality, the entity in charge of supervising compliance with the provisions established in the law to prevent indiscipline and illegalities.
“This does not affect me, what affects me is the injustice, because if it is a correct fine that they are giving me, the least I can do is pay it, because the laws are followed in all parts of the world, but this is unfair and they continue to commit injustices," he complained.
Another old man, in that case wheelbarrow, who has been fined more than 10 times in recent months - the last of them for 1,500 pesos - complains that inspectors always find justification to issue a fine.
In his statements to the aforementioned media, the self-employed worker explained that the “repression” with the forklift drivers is only against those who do not do “business with the inspectors,” who They demand high money in exchange for letting them work in peace.
“The only thing that is giving food to the people of Cuba are the forklift drivers because the government does not give anything and has nothing to give. They are more tyrannical than the same dictatorship that existed before,” concluded another interviewee.
Questioned about the issue, a DIS official from the Habana Vieja municipality declared to the aforementioned media that the inspectors only comply with what is established in current legislation.
He argued that in the case of pedicab drivers, they know that they cannot stand in places where the law prohibits it, much less piquera. In relation to forklift drivers, he explained that their license specifies that they must be moving and that they can only stop when they are going to make a sale.
The increase in fines related to the sale of agricultural products has left at least a couple of sad news stories in recent months.
In May, the suicide of an 83-year-old man in Las Tunas, ex-combatant from Angola, after being fined 4,000 pesos for selling meat in a trolley and not having money to pay the sanction, caused deep consternation among Cubans.
In March of last year, the suicide of a young man in Mayarí, in the province of Holguín, also made the news, after having been fined by the police with 5,000 pesos for selling agricultural products on the street without having a license to do so.
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