Havana/The disagreement continues to grow among Cuban doctors in Angola. To the discomfort for the official decision to transfer part of their savings to a classic card, instead of delivering dollars, the one that causes the delay in the payment to their families in Cuba and the postponement of their vacation on the island is added. “My mother does not receive a penny since May”, denounces a specialist to 14ymedio.
Together with the retribution in Kuanzas, equivalent to about 200 dollars, that the woman must collect each month in Angola and that allocates to her daily expenses, accumulates the rest of the money, about $ 1,200, in Cuba waiting to be able to collect it when the mission ends, a way to prevent it from escaping. As added, his family must also receive a small monthly amount at that time, but the arrears in those payments complicate the subsistence of his mother and teenage son.
These irregularities caused a group of collaborators to prepare, “on behalf of all, a letter to the Prosecutor’s Office claiming the payment in foreign exchange and the improvement of the economic conditions in which we work,” details the doctor who has been in a clinic in Luanda for almost three years. The letter was made after A sour meeting that the collaborators with the executives of Antex (Corporación Antillana Exportadora SA), owned by the GAESA military conglomerate and that manages the stay of the specialists in the African country.
In that meeting, the collaborators left clear Your discomfort And they demanded directly the dollars that the Angolan government pays to Antex for each Cuban hired through that mechanism. In addition to doctors, builders, sports coaches and a wide range of health personnel also work. All under similar conditions.
Cuban professionals have been demanding that the accumulated money on the island in currencies be given years
Cuban professionals have been demanding that They are given the money accumulated on the island in currencies, But the government’s response has recently been to announce that as of next January they will have a classic card to buy at the Dollarized storesalthough they will still not receive cash currencies. After the tense meeting last August, Antex managers tried to calm the spirits ensuring that they would advance the start of the payment with classic for this September.
The commitment has not been fulfilled and now the instability is added in the payment schedule to the relatives and that Surex has not bought tickets so that the specialists pass their vacations on the island. “They give us long and that is a breach of the contract because it is supposed to be able to return to our country at the time in which we have a pause of work, but last August I had my vacation and I had to stay here.”
“Several commercial flights from the Taag but an above came out did not buy tickets, except exceptional cases and therefore many who travel in the months of vacation could not do it,” laments the specialist. These trips are used by Cuban workers to transfer merchandise to the island, which then reversal, one of the few incentive materials they have in the midst of their tense economic situation.
Emilio, a Cuban doctor with the name changed for this report, and used at the Maternal Maternal Do Camama Dr. Manuel Pedro Azancot de Menezes hospital in Luanda, feels “about to explode.” In his opinion since the recent announcement of the use of the classic “nothing has improved, all he has done is worsen the attention we receive from an above.”
“They have not backed down the decision to pay us with the classic and to top it up we suffer months of delay in the bank deposits that our relatives must make in Cuba,” he warns. “Nor have they received the payment in freely convertible currency (MLC)” increasingly devalued in the informal change market and is currently quoted at 205 pesos for each dollar.
Last July, the professionals sent a letter to Miguel Díaz-Canel in which they denounced the “breach of the payment form established in the contract”
Last July, the professionals sent a letter to Miguel Díaz-Canel in which they denounced the “breach of the payment established in the contract” and claimed that they would be allowed to charge in dollars the accumulated amount for years of stay in Angola, in their bank accounts on the island. But the president has not yet responded to that letter.
Emilio also denounces that “now without prior notice or explanations here in Angola they began paying us monthly only the equivalent of $ 100, instead of the 200 agreed.” The man shows this newspaper the entrance report of a transfer in his bank account worth 93,000 kuanzas, equivalent to $ 100. “No one has told us why this cuts,” he laments.
On other occasions, Cuban professionals have suffered this type of monetary impairment that complicate their lives in the African country. “Sometimes I have to borrow the mobile from my Angolan colleagues to make a call or navigate online because it is not enough to buy a data package, cover the accommodation where I am and eat.” Emilio considers that Cuban doctors are “the fifth wheel of the car for an above.”
Similar opinions had already been heard at the tense meeting in Luanda. “I do not want to buy food, I do not want to buy appliances, I want to buy a property,” insisted on that meeting a sanitary as a rejection of payment for its services in MLC or with classic on the island. “Are you going to force us to commit crimes, to resort to the black market to be able to have the dollars of truth. These are plans of whole lives, of complete families that you are destroying,”
The Anterx Corporation, sanctioned by the United States foreign asset control office, manages in Angola a large business fan
The Anterx Corporation, sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the United States, 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 He received more than 1,000 million dollars from that countryas he revealed The touch. Through antex and other companies, Cuba has charged their participation-found by the USSR-in the Angolan 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.
Now, Emilio concludes that the complaint and complaints in meetings are of little use. “What we should do is deny ourselves to work in these conditions but, of course, they know that they can always hire some naive in Cuba who, in order to get out of there to accept these humiliating conditions.”
