Based on robberies and vandalism, the inhabitants of Las Tunas are “dismantling” the public spaces of the city. The list of “reprehensible” acts, as he called them the official press this Mondayis extensive: landfills, destruction of buildings, theft of furniture and corruption in state establishments.
The most alarming situation occurs in the provincial hospital, which, according to its directors, treats more than 7,000 patients daily. “The lamp tubes, the screws for the window panes and the panes themselves have been stolen,” denounced Carlos Pérez Santiesteban, deputy clinical-surgical director of the center.
The companions of most of the patients take advantage of their stay in the hospital, according to the doctor, to get hold of what they find, from a piece of metal to the leagues of the chairs. To make matters worse, the doctor complains, “stretchers and wheelchairs are mistreated, mattresses are not protected, food is ingested on top of the beds and liquids are spilled.”
Pérez, who describes the possibility of controlling the situation as “difficult”, also regrets that people steal or destroy the installation’s switches, and that they intentionally dump waste in the corridors, bathrooms and eaves of the building. In addition, there is a habit of scratching the walls, smearing them with grease or damaging the paint.
According to the press, the “fury” of the people from Las Tunas has an explanation: they behave “as if they were bothered” by the good condition of public spaces. It is no longer a question of neglect, but of vandalizing what cannot be transported to homes, such as park benches or the walls of a building.
“In a bakery, for example, flour and oil are stolen and sold in the same neighborhood.” Nobody has scruples when it comes to “taking advantage” of public goods
Las Tunas, the report states, “has large debts” with “collective property”, and attributes to young people “a training problem” that later affects their adult behavior. However, it does not mention at any time the deficiencies and shortages – common throughout the country but exacerbated in the eastern provinces – that have triggered crime rates on the Island, although they do not justify other behaviors such as dirtying and vandalizing hospital facilities. .
There are people who even steal a piece of marble “to make a mincer for spices and meat,” one of the Las Tunas interviewed by the official press is astonished, which also publishes photographs of the “torn sites” in the city. Almost all the benches in Plaza Calé lost their slats, while the metal railings of the Colón street bridge – whose potholes are a danger to traffic – have been sawn off and stolen.
In the same sorry state is the fence of the Hermanos Ameijeiras airport, whose wire fences and poles, already damaged by rust, have been cut and “recycled” in homes.
“Everyone here ‘fights’,” says one of the interviewees in the official report cautiously. “In a bakery, for example, flour and oil are stolen and sold in the same neighborhood.” No one has scruples when it comes to “taking advantage of” public goods, it doesn’t matter if they are food or construction materials –rebar, stones, bricks– that are already part of some structure. That notion, he admits, even “stands up for itself.”
Another problem is the hygiene of the city, to which he has referred at other times the local newspaper. The amount of garbage in the streets, the puddles of urine in squares and parks, and the fact that almost all the transportation of the waste depends on horse-drawn carts – for which Community Services pay little and late – increase the discomfort of the population.
The “latest fashion”, the newspaper claims, is to break bottles and leave the glass shards on the streets, which are already littered with excrement, paper and potholes. At the height of the burden, the text devotes several paragraphs to giving lessons in “socialist morality” and civility to the people of Las Tunas, whose attitude cannot be explained and who will end up, he assures, by leaving only loose “pieces” of the city.
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