State workers in the province of Holguín are experiencing delays in the collection of their monthly salaries. Among the most affected are the employees of Education and Public Health who have not been able to receive their salaries due to lack of cash in the banks, according to testimonies collected by 14ymedio.
“Several state companies have not been able to collect,” laments an employee linked to the Ministry of Internal Commerce in the city of Holguín. “When my company’s economics officer contacted the bank, they told him that at the moment the payment cannot be made because they do not have enough cash.”
“This is a very sensitive time of the year because we have just come out of all the Christmas celebrations and people are ripped off,” acknowledges the employee. “People spent what they had and what they did not have to try to guarantee dinner on December 31 and now the news comes that the payments are going to take time. How are we going to hold out until the collection arrives?”
Some workers have suggested that their salary be put on their magnetic card, associated with a bank account where the salary is deposited, in order to be able to carry out at least electronic operations such as paying for electricity or others for which it is not necessary to withdraw cash, but the proposal has not received a positive response.
“In these sectors there are those who should have been paid at the end of last year and still have not been able to”
“You cannot pay in cash or with a deposit on the card because in any case if they go to the bank they will not be able to extract that money. We have to wait for the Banco de Crédito y Comercio (Bandec) to notify us that we already have the deposit to start pay the payroll”, underlines the accountant of a Credit and Service Cooperative in Holguin, also affected by the lack of money.
According to his account, up to now the civilian workers of the Armed Forces and also of other official dependencies have been able to collect, but the most serious problems are the personnel of Education and other ministries that have a large volume of workers and who collect at the same time . “In those sectors, there are those who should have been paid at the end of last year and still haven’t been able to,” she asserts.
Some state workers have had better luck, such as those from Telecristal, the local telecentre, who managed to collect their salaries, but “it was almost a stroke of luck,” admits an employee of the institution who preferred anonymity. “I was able to collect, but my husband, who works in another company of the Ministry of Agriculture, has been putting off for days.”
Some state agencies in the province have been able to access the salaries of their workers, as is the case of Tabacuba, whose payments were made around January 4. The collection dates vary between entities and especially if they are permanent workers, by contract or by agreement.
The lack of cash is not a novelty and the Banco de Crédito y Comercio itself was forced to report, half a year ago, that it had run out of Cuban pesos to place at ATMs in some cities in eastern Cuba.
The Bandec authorities then attributed the problem to the lack of high denomination bills and excused themselves, among other reasons, for the “coincidence of salary payments” in almost all the companies in the eastern part of the country.
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