A bank in Havana that had sent its customers home due to a supposed server failure resumed operations within minutes of a journalist's arrival, without any technicians appearing to fix the system, according to a report published on Facebook.
The website La Cuba real shared this Thursday the account of what happened at the branch located at Prado, corner of Ánimas and Virtudes, in Old Havana, where workers had reported that they could not provide service because the server was down and the technicians were addressing a similar malfunction at another entity.
According to the publication, customers were instructed to leave the location and go to other banks, as the repairs could take all day and there would be no service on Monday.
However, a journalist from the official press who was conducting a report in front of the Marriage Palace noticed that the branch was empty and approached the establishment. Within minutes, the system was back up and running, the connection was restored, and service resumed as usual, according to accounts shared on social media.
The incident prompted numerous reactions and questions regarding the explanation given to clients. "Was the server broken at any point? If the journalist hadn't arrived, would the employees have taken the day off?" questioned the author of the complaint, who also asked what would have happened to the funds intended for distribution to the public that day.
The comments included other testimonies about difficulties at Havana's bank branches. One citizen recounted that at the bank on 29th and 42nd in the Playa municipality, customers were informed they needed to wait for a password change, but the bank opened half an hour later, by which time most had already left. "Total mockery and shamelessness towards the people," he wrote.
Another user reported that they waited in line for four hours and that, at 3:30 PM, they received their identity card back without being attended to. According to their testimony, during lunchtime, only one cashier was available to serve the public.
From a branch located at 23 and Malecón in Vedado, an individual also reported the alleged existence of intermediaries who would be controlling the appointments. "There is a syndicate of intermediaries, a leader with several organizers, and each intermediary has to pay that leader 1,000 pesos to take 10 appointments daily," they stated.
Other comments pointed to the repeated explanations about blackouts and technological failures to justify the interruptions. "That's the trend with the banks now; between the blackout and the server, they're just making excuses," wrote an internet user.
The controversy arises amid a banking crisis that hinders Cubans' access to cash, with ATMs out of service, reduced withdrawal limits, and long lines to collect salaries and pensions.
In July, the journalist and professor Iraida Calzadilla recounted that she spent eight hours waiting in line “lying on a curb” to collect her pension at a branch located in the Ministry of Transportation.
In one of the comments on Calzadilla's post, the photojournalist from the official newspaper Granma Ricardo López Hevia described what he witnessed in just 10 minutes at the bank in Mónaco, in the municipality of Diez de Octubre: "I saw people screaming, crying in despair, I saw canes striking and loud accusations," he wrote.
Difficulties arose after the implementation of mandatory banking in August 2023, which shifted the payment of salaries and pensions to bank cards without the technological infrastructure being able to adequately respond to the demand for cash.
In June, the Banco Metropolitano decided to deactivate ATMs to prevent customers from "causing disturbances", according to a complaint circulated at that time, and reduced the withdrawal limit from 5,000 to 3,000 pesos per transaction.
The lack of cash has also forced the search for alternatives outside the state banking network. In Guantánamo, 113 private businesses assumed in August the payment of pensions to over 3,000 retirees, highlighting the challenges in ensuring a basic benefit for thousands of people through traditional channels.
The case of Prado, Ánimas, and Virtudes raises new questions about the quality of banking service and the transparency of the explanations provided to customers when a branch suspends its operations. For now, the complaint circulated on social media does not provide independent confirmation regarding the cause of the outage or the circumstances that allowed the service to be restored.
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