Cuban Government approves Decree Law that regulates the labor regime of prisoners

The Cuban government approved this Monday a Decree Law that regulates the labor regime ofconvicts "who work inside or outside of Penitentiary Establishments."

Under the title “Of the Special Labor Regime of Persons Deprived of Liberty who work inside or outside Penitentiary Establishments”, the Council of State gave the green light to the norm.

The decree establishes the special labor regime applicable to natural persons (whether Cuban or foreign), who are serving criminal sanctions in penitentiary establishments, as explained by theNational Assembly of People's Power (ANPP) in itswebsite.

The norm regulates the regime applicable to those prisoners who join work inside or outside penitentiary establishments during the criminal sanction, or for those sanctioned with precautionary measures of provisional detention.

Without offering details of the legal text, or a link to it, the ANPP website indicated that the norm “regulates the legal employment relationship established between the person deprived of liberty (fit and willing to work), and the authority penitentiary for the development of a subordinate paid labor service.”

Likewise, he indicated that its application also falls on “those who are serving a precautionary measure of provisional detention in the Cuban prison system”; but excludes “the activities that are part of the educational process in the penitentiary establishment.”

For the secretary of the ANPP,Homero Acosta Alvarez, the norm “is profoundly advanced and revolutionary, respectful of work as a constitutional right of all people capable of working, of great humanistic scope and with a higher normative hierarchy; as well as it is in accordance with the international standards that regulate this matter.”

A recent report by Cuban Television that addressed the critical hygienic-sanitary situation caused by the accumulation of waste in Havana, revealed that the provincial government and the authorities of the Communal ServicesThey used inmates to collect tons of garbage that crowd their streets.

This is what he recognizedOnelio of Jesus Ojeda, provincial director of Communal Services of Havana, indicating that the “instability of the workforce” (lack of personnel to carry out these tasks) has forced the Communal Services of the capital to have to work “with a significant group of inmates and sanctioned.”

“This constitutes an important force in us, based on the instability of the workforce and the completion of the workforce, which is at 68%,” said the manager. In that sense, the director of the provincial Communal Hygiene company,Odalis Acosta He said that “today the average salary of the workers of this company is about 3,500 pesos.”

At the end of May, the Havana government summoned a group of people residing in the Marianao municipality through judicial channels, whoThey were unemployed, several of whom were arrested.

Days before, capital authoritiesparole revoked dozens of people previously sentenced to prison in the municipalities of Centro Habana, Cerro, Marianao, Habana del Este and San Miguel del Padrón, given the increase in crime in the city.