A video published this Friday showed a crowd of people gathered in front of the Banco Popular de Ahorro (BPA) on Prado Street, between Pedro Agustín Pérez and José Martí, in the city of Guantánamo, where citizens are trying to withdraw cash amid an unrelenting liquidity crisis.
"The crowd of people in front of the Prado bank. Undoubtedly, this line is to withdraw cash. Something that has become quite complicated here," the video’s author explained bluntly, shared by the user Raynier Arjona on his Facebook profile.
Among those waiting in the sun are retirees who come to collect their pensions, noted several commentators on the video.
The situation raises alarm due to the conditions under which the wait occurs. "It's horrifying, very sad what people are experiencing, and many elderly people there even collapse," warned one of the comments.
Another user bitterly summed up the disproportion of the effort: "A world of people to earn 500 pesos."
Citizen indignation also pointed to institutional disorder. "This is how the government wants to see them, there is no organization," wrote one person.
Another added: "It's chaotic, how painful that is, so many vulnerable people in our city."
A commentator summarized it with irony: "In the only country in the world where the bank runs away from the customer is Cuba. Everywhere else, the bank chases after customers."
The problem is not new in Guantánamo. In July, the provincial government acknowledged that the banks in the province were not capturing enough cash to cover salaries and pensions.
At that moment, the BPA was barely reaching 92% of its daily collection target, while the Banco de Crédito y Comercio (Bandec), which needs to bring in nearly 15 million pesos a day, was only managing to capture just over 35% of that goal.
In mid-August, Bandec announced the use of private businesses as payment agents to distribute pensions and reduce queues, an implicit acknowledgment of the collapse of the traditional banking system.
Despite that measure, the turmoil captured this Friday at the BPA on Prado shows that the problem persists.
More than 1.7 million retired Cubans receive pensions with a minimum amount of 4,000 pesos per month, which is less than 10 dollars at the informal exchange rate, while various estimates place the cost of a basic monthly food basket per person at 30,000 pesos.
In Holguín, retirees were left without payment again days ago, because the money simply did not arrive at the post offices or bank branches.
In Santiago de Cuba, the institutional response was to bring chairs, soup, and beverages to the retirees who wait for hours in front of the bank, a measure labeled a "humanitarian effort" by the authorities, but which does not address the underlying issue.
The official newspaper Venceremos acknowledged in July that the banking situation "has ceased to be a banking difficulty and has become a social problem", an admission that contrasts with the lack of real solutions for Cubans who must fight each month to access their own money.
The provincial director of the Banco Popular de Ahorro (BPA) in Guantánamo, Yaritza León Mustelier, revealed this Friday that 113 private businesses are taking on the cash payment of pensions to retirees in the province, due to the banking system's inability to provide this service on its own.
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