The day after its opening, announced with fanfare by the official press this Tuesday, the Thaba company store in the Havana municipality of Cerro was already being audited. The inauguration raised a lot of expectations, as it was announced that the establishment would sell items such as gloves, masks, backpacks and caps, very difficult to find on the island, at low prices and in pesos.
“You can’t buy at this time because they are auditing the store,” explained the man who introduced himself as the store’s manager at the door this Wednesday to the people who had been queuing up since early morning. And he stressed grumpily, with the manner of an agent of the Ministry of the Interior: “They can come and look but without interrupting at any time what they are doing in there.”
Most of those who were waiting turned around, but others, curious, did agree. In the tiny store, several of them took out their mobile phones to take photos of the products and their prices, but were severely warned by an employee: “You can take photos, but you can’t post them on social networks.”
On the counter, a modern electronics box gleamed. Payments, the workers reported, cannot be made in cash, only through the EnZona or TransferMovil applications
On the counter, a modern electronics box gleamed. The payments, the workers reported, cannot be made in cash, only through the EnZona or TransferMovil applications.
The attraction of the trade is, without a doubt, the rubber gloves (at 70 pesos), unfindable in Cuba for a long time. For the rest, the offer is limited to several backpacks, a few caps – all with Cuban flags – and masks.
To the disappointment of those who entered, the facemasks were non-surgical – even though hundreds of thousands of blueish national accumulate in the warehouse from the Gardis state plant–, but made of cloth, and at 30 pesos each.
At the store, a leather apron costs 1,400 pesos, while a belt used by stevedores and people carrying merchandise costs 400, a bag costs 800 pesos, and a hard-structured carry-on suitcase costs 2,000 pesos.
All the items come from the state-owned Thaba, dedicated to producing “protection means of all kinds” in different factories throughout the country, including gloves, aprons, wristbands, bags, umbrellas and tents. The plant is even designated to produce baseball gloves.
“For this one chinchal so much belly who came here yesterday?” commented a woman as she left, disenchanted, alluding to the high officials who inaugurated the store this Tuesday, such as the first secretary of Havana, Luis Antonio Torres Iríbar. “Right now they are inaugurating even a cart of state hailstorm”.
Located on Suzarte street, in the Palatino neighborhood, the establishment aims, according to Havana Tribune, “meet the needs of the population, looking for a way to make prices competitive”. The official note affects the latter, reiterating that the costs will be “above all below those of the informal market, of the TCP and of the new forms of non-state management.”
The opening of a store in pesos, in the midst of the economic crisis that the Island is going through, is an increasingly sporadic event. If the presence of the highest partisan leader in the city is added, the expectation created among the potential customers of the business was quite high, but a few hours have been enough to land those illusions.
The parade of officials did not stop with Torres Iríbar: this Wednesday, the Minister of Communications, Mayra Arevich Marín, visited the store to “verify the use of electronic payments in CUP made by the population through the Transfermóvil and Enzona platforms” , told the Thaba company on its Facebook account.
The same day that Arevich congratulated the employees for their skills in the use of this payment technology, a dozen customers were frustrated in front of the store door because an audit prevented the products from being sold. “What starts badly ends badly,” declared an old man who decided to retrace his steps and come back another day.
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