Havana Cuba. – The Cuban ex-marine Juan Alexander Morales González has been waiting for more than eight years for the island authorities to pay the compensation that corresponds to him after falling ill due to “work effort” to which he was subjected aboard the ship Jolbos of the shipping company Northsouth Maritime (formerly Nordstrand Maritime).
“Almost nine years have passed and they still do not recognize the violations they committed in my case. I went to the Prosecutor’s Office, to the courts and at no time did they proceed with my lawsuit, which was presented with documents provided by the doctors in charge of my case, ”he denounced.
In 2012, Morales González ―with labor file number 16511― was hired by the employing agency SELECMAR as a deckhand on the ship Jolbos.
While repairing the ship, he says, he began to suffer from neck pain, vomiting and bleeding, caused, he said, by the physical effort he made daily on board the ship.
“During a 46-day journey to Cuba, all these health situations increased. There was no concern, neither for the ship’s officers nor for the doctor. They came to say that what I was was cowardly, ”she says. “The ship’s doctor put in the Crew Medical Report [informe médico de la tripulación] that my case was pre-existing”, he specifies.
After his arrival on land and after performing various tests, the specialists diagnosed him with a traumatic injury to two vertebrae of the spinal cord that led to a progressive degenerative disease and, therefore, to his retirement as a sailor.
After the confirmation of his illness, Morales González appeared at SELECMAR to claim the compensation that corresponded to him, as established in his contract and in the Collective Agreement, and to process his presentation to the expert commission, account.
“In the end they never took me to the expert opinion and what they did was wait for the contract to end to ignore me to avoid any type of compensation.”
From that moment, says the interviewee, he began his odyssey with the Cuban authorities who, to date, have only granted him a pension of 1,500 Cuban pesos. However, according to the Collective Bargaining Agreement, Morales González should have received some 60,000 dollars in compensation.
“A seafarer who has been declared partially or totally disabled as a result of an accident or illness of any kind suffered during his period of employment with the Company, including an accident or illness suffered during the voyage to or from the ship, where his aptitudes for work on ships are consequently diminished or totally disabled, he shall be entitled to receive compensation from the Company, according to the degree of disability established, in accordance with the provisions of clause 43.3 and Annex II of this Agreement” , indicates the document to which you had access CubaNet.
In addition, the Collective Bargaining Agreement establishes that once the sailor’s disability has been declared, the Company will proceed immediately to pay compensation according to the percentage of disability established.
However, despite the man’s incessant claims over the last eight years, the competent authorities continue to deny him payment of compensation on the grounds that it is a pre-existing disease (although the condition is not recorded in the medical record of Morales Gonzalez).
Dr. Cecilia Cañizares Marrero, neurosurgeon in charge of the case on land, assured in a written and coined document, to which she also had access CubaNetthat the ship’s doctor could not affirm or prove the pre-existence of a disease that could only be confirmed by a neurosurgery specialist authorized with the necessary tests.
Similarly, the medical specialists who examined Morales González (thanks to his own management) certified in a written document that his illness had been caused by the excessive force that the worker used.
“Consider the damage you have caused. If the worker had not received the damage resulting from his forceful action with trauma, he would not be in the current health and disability situation”, concludes the document signed by Dr. María Magdalena Ramos, a specialist in Occupational Medicine and president of the commission that he expert Morales González.
For his part, Morales González is losing hope. “[Las autoridades] They are not capable of doing justice to all the violations that have affected me. My health has cracked more due to all these years of fighting, complaints, complaints and they simply do not pay attention, ”she ends.
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