A 26-year-old mother claims that, despite the authorities’ promise to help women with three or more children, the institutions in Arroyo Naranjo, where she lives, have abandoned her.
HAVANA, Cuba. – “Everything is very difficult in this country: housing, food, snacks, clothes, shoes, [mucho más si es] for five children. Honestly, it is desperate to live in this situation,” he denounced during an interview with CubaNet the young mother Wendy Martínez Querejeta, who assures that, despite the promise of the authorities to help mothers with three or more children, the institutions of Arroyo Naranjo, where she lives, have abandoned her.
The young woman also said that since 2021 she has been waiting for a solution from the authorities to her housing problem. That year, the Municipal Housing Directorate of Arroyo Naranjo “rightly” declared its complaint for complying with the requirements established by its regulations.
“My case has not been given any type of attention and they have only known how to deceive me, even though they know that I have five children and I am expecting the sixth. I feel abandoned because no one has come to my house and the only thing I can thank the Government of my municipality is the two cribs and a backpack that they gave me, nothing more,” she stated.
Martínez Querejeta is 26 years old. According to him, in his grandmother’s house, where he lived, he did not have the space or the minimum conditions to live with his children, so he had to go live with the family of his children’s father.
“At my grandmother’s house we slept on the living room floor, which was full of things, of tasks. One day I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to go live with my children’s father’s family, where, although there is no space or conditions, I am a little better,” Martínez Querejeta explained.
It was in 2021 that he began to approach government institutions. In each of them, he presented his problem and his shortcomings. At that time he only had three children and received a social assistance checkbook for which he still receives 5,200 pesos today (regardless of the fact that he now has five children or that the inflationary outlook has devalued that amount even more).
“I went to the Government of Arroyo Naranjo, to the Municipal Prosecutor’s Office, to [la Dirección Municipal de] Labor and Social Security, to the Federation of Cuban Women, to the Provincial Government, to the [la Dirección] Provincial Housing Department and the Population Assistance Office of the Council of State, and they never gave me a concrete answer,” he lamented.
Tired of the evasion of the institutions, that same year (2021) she staged a protest in the Plaza de la Revolución. “They immediately agreed with me, but I was waiting for an answer that I have not seen until today,” he noted.
“The only thing I am asking from the Government is a subsidy to be able to build a bathroom and kitchen, because all I have are two rooms and a hallway, and soon there will be six children who need their space,” he noted.
The young woman urged the authorities of Arroyo Naranjo to fulfill the promises of ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel, who in 2022 ordered to help mothers with three or more children to stimulate fertility in the country.
