Cuba: High Prices, Lines and Shortages | DW Documentary

Oct 22, 2022 | In Cuba, the socialist project begun by revolutionary hero and former president Fidel Castro is teetering on the verge of failure. The nation is sinking deeper into crisis, with many people’s daily lives marred by shortages of food, medicine and electricity.

Cuba has been subject to sanctions for decades. Despite recent attempts at reform, the country is increasingly isolated and economically dependent. A currency reform enacted in 2021 is also causing major problems, with inflation soaring and prices skyrocketing. Food is scarce, and lines in front of the few state-run stores are getting longer and longer.

Poverty is on the rise. Even the famous ingenuity of the Cuban people is reaching its limits as they try to cope with the day-to-day effects of the crisis. Images of bygone revolutionaries are fading in the streets the capital, Havana, and all over the island. Official voices continue to broadcast the state’s ideology, but ordinary people are losing hope that things will improve.

Many Cubans Unhappy with Pace of Change

Cuba Lays-off State Workers in Privatisation Drive
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Cuba has begun the process of laying-off a tenth of its state workforce in a drive to push employees into small businesses that could mark the beginning of the end of the 50-year communist experiment on the island.

The state labour union announced this week that the first of some 500,000 employees could expect to receive "pink slips" immediately, effectively terminating their employment in the public sector where, until now, almost 90 per cent of Cuba's workforce have been employed.

The lay-offs will begin in the ministries of agriculture, sugar, construction, health and tourism, according to Salvador Valdes, the leader of the Workers' Central Union of Cuba (CTC). Workers, who on average earn a monthly wage of $20 (£13), were told to expect compensation of one month's salary for every ten years on the job.

Committees have been set up in each workplace to draw up the list of those jobs to be cut, the CTC said – a process that "will be free of favouritism, nepotism and paternalism". >>> Fiona Govan, Madrid | Wednesday, January 05, 2011