Havana/In an environment loaded with tension, meetings with Cuban professionals in official mission began this Friday. The measure of transferring part of his savings on the island to a classic card, without the possibility of extracting cash as established by the contract they signed, has only turned on the disagreement more.
At Luanda’s meeting, chaired by Carlos – provincial coordinator – the temperature of the criticism rose quickly. There was not a single voice in favor of the provision, according to the testimonies collected by 14ymedio. “It was a catharsis,” Marcia summed GAESA military conglomeratehe starred in the interventions.
Carlos himself acknowledged that the document had already leaked with the publication by this newspaper, last Wednesday, of The call to the meetings. “Say what they say, everything is already determined,” Marcia acknowledges, who sees in the current meetings a formality that will not change the course of the antex decision not to deliver cash and only facilitate purchases in the dollarized stores. “They are making us relieve us but we have been making these claims for years and nothing.”
However, this time professionals seem to have gone a step further. On July 14 they sent a Letter to Miguel Díaz-Canel where they denounce the “breach of payment form established in the contract” and claim that they are allowed to charge in dollars the accumulated amount, for years of stay in Angola, in their bank accounts on the island. Now, given the lack of response of the president, they are willing to reach the courts.
On July 14, they sent a letter to Miguel Díaz-Canel where they denounce the “breach of payment form established in the contract”
The discomfort at this Saturday’s meeting was widespread. “It is a violation of our contract, a violation that exists from day one,” denounced a doctor who has been in Angola for four years. The woman regretted that after years of claims, Havana has only agreed to offer them a classic card to buy in freshly opened dollars on the island, instead of allowing them to extract the cashier in cash.
As of next year, the toilets will have two magnetic cards: the current one in freely convertible currency (MLC) and the new classic, but will still not be able to obtain cash dollars, as stipulated in the contract they signed. For the doctor, this is inadmissible. In his town, he said, the only store in MLC barely offers alcoholic beverages and tomato sauce.
“I don’t want to buy food, I don’t want to buy appliances, I want to buy a property,” the woman insisted. “Are they going to force us to commit crimes, to resort to the black market to be able to have the real dollars. These are plans of whole lives, of complete families that you are destroying.”
The sanitary stressed the personal cost of the mission: “We have lost relatives, births of children, diseases. These are moments that we are not going to recover.” With just the equivalent of 200 dollars, delivered in Kuanzas, to cover their needs in Angola, specialists live between narrows and non -compliance with an above. The rest of the payment, about $ 1,200, is saved on the island to avoid defections. “Months spent only 100 dollars per month and the news had to leave on social networks so that this year we would complete that money, they are exploiters,” Marcia emphasizes.
The Anterx Corporation, sanctioned by the United States Foreign Assets Control Office (OFAC), manages in Angola a wide range of businesses that include from the construction of roads and the repair of aerodromes to the management of travel agencies. Only between 2013 and 2017 received more than 1,000 million dollars from that country, as revealed The touch. Through antex and other companies, Cuba your participation has been charged –Financed by the USSR– in the Angolaña Civil War (1975-1991) with more than 300,000 soldiers. In 2015, the Portuguese press indicated that 70% of the health personnel in Angola was of Cuban origin.
As the meeting progressed, which lasted more than two hours, the rejection of Antex was increasing. “This is still a violation of our contract”
As the meeting progressed, which lasted more than two hours, the rejection of Antex was increasing. “This is still a violation of our contract. A violation that is being put into practice from day one, I have been here for four years and it has always been so,” said another doctor. “Cuba is a country that right now has four coins,” criticized the health from a small town in the interior of the country.
“I am not at all pleased. I am disappointed in this company,” concluded the doctor, who was followed by another sanitary who questioned the argument of the coordinator who wielded the difficulties facing antex to pay in cash due to the American embargo and the obstacles for the transfer of money to the island. “Well, why do you send my money for my money? Why don’t you give it to me? “The specialist questioned. “You’re cheating me, you’re stealing me, so I’m going to sue Antex.”
The man, who has spent four years on the mission, uploaded the tone: “I am going to look for a lawyer, I will sue and I will do what I have to do because they are breaking their contract with me, which is the payment in dollars. That classic card is why it is not a real money in my hand.”
A doctor from Havana, who works in Angola since 2020, also joined the diatribe. “This of giving us a classic is the worst scenario. Who is thinking about us? It is what I wonder. Who thinks of us? Who takes those measures and really thinks about the collaborator?” He questioned. “Rapped, stolen, disappointed, so I feel,” he said.
“I did not come to this country to buy or puree of tomato, or sanitary paper,” added another outraged specialist. The toilets listed the personal and family rigors that the mission has meant for them. From suffering diseases such as malaria, until weeks spending an office “in the middle of nowhere and without electricity, with the risk of an assault, of a murder,” said the doctor. “I came here to improve my family’s economy.”
In the group, several military doctors also showed their disagreement with the situation
In the group, several military doctors also showed their disagreement with the situation. One of them identified with their greatest degrees and lamented what he considered a scam. The warning of a lawsuit was repeated by several of the doctors present who even invoked the right to the peaceful demonstration that includes the Constitution of Cuba. “This is our way to express us,” said the officer.
The coordinator of the Brigade kept most of the meeting silence and just listened to the cataract of claims that surrounded for more than two hours. If something was clear is that the arguments of the difficulties that the country is going through do not seem to be working on brigades that, traditionally, have maintained a strict silence about their dissatisfactions, the breach of the agreed and the extreme conditions in which they often work.
“Antex is not a transparent company,” said another sanitary of Santiago de Cuba. The health professional considers that, in general, the signed contract “is abusive because the collaborator has more duties than rights.” “We do not want virtual money, we only accept our dollars,” he reiterated in one of the most tense moments of the meeting. “I demand that they pay me what my contract says, the rest is unacceptable. Antex is a company that does not represent us, he has forgotten us.”
