Workers from the Commerce and Gastronomy company of the Manuel Tames municipality in Guantánamo have gone two months without receiving their salaries, acknowledged this Friday the station Radio Guantánamo while covering the meeting for the operational and socioeconomic analysis of the province.
The delay was addressed during the meeting led by Yoel Pérez García, the First Secretary of the Communist Party in Guantánamo, along with the main provincial and municipal authorities via audio conference.
The official statement merely indicated the existence of a "delay in salary payment" to the employees of that company, without specifying the reasons for the non-payment or providing information on concrete measures to resolve the situation.
The case adds to other economic and social issues discussed at the meeting, including difficulties in water supply in several localities and the effectiveness of pension payments supported by the non-state sector.
The information released by the authorities did not specify when the payment of the overdue salaries to the workers of Commerce and Gastronomy in Manuel Tames would be restored.
The case is the most recent expression of a liquidity crisis affecting the eastern province.
In July, the authorities acknowledged that the banks in the province lacked sufficient cash to meet their operational needs and warned that they would impose penalties on state and private merchants who refuse to accept payments via electronic transfer.
The Credit and Commerce Bank (Bandec), for example, was only able to capture just over 35% of the nearly 15 million pesos needed for its daily operations.
Due to the incapacity of the banking system, the provincial government resorted to a solution that independent economists have labeled as haphazard: mobilizing 113 private businesses to manage cash payments for pensions to over 3,000 retirees.
The provincial director of the Popular Savings Bank, Yaritza León Mustelier, described this participation as an act of "human interest in providing the important service to society," reported the official newspaper Venceremos.
The pattern of non-payment in the Commerce and Gastronomy sector is recurring in other provinces. A public complaint reported in August raised alarms that employees in the same sector in Guáimaro, in the province of Camagüey, had gone almost six months without receiving their pay, despite the Provincial Bank allocating 90 million pesos for those payments that never reached the workers.
Also in Camagüey, teachers from the Vicente Chávez mixed school in Vertientes reported in July that they had gone two months without pay. The only official response they received was "there is no money."
The government approved an increase in the minimum wage from 2,100 to 3,210 pesos per month in July, but independent economists warn that this figure is laughable compared to an estimated cost of living of over 50,000 pesos per month per person.
Meanwhile, in Guantánamo, massive crowds are gathering outside the Banco Popular de Ahorro, where citizens are attempting to withdraw cash without success.
"Has stopped being a banking difficulty to become a social problem," acknowledged Venceremos while describing the situation in the province.
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