Havana Cuba. – Workers from the private sector in the Habana Vieja municipality denounced before the cameras of CubaNet suffering “siege and harassment” by inspectors from the Comprehensive Supervision Directorate (DIS) and the National Revolutionary Police (PNR).
“How long are we going to be allowing these things in this country, with the situation that is so critical, with the big problems that this town has? They are working so that this government falls because every day they irritate the people more,” denounced the pedicab driver Antonio Font Carreño, who was fined 500 pesos.
The interviewee considered “unfair and arbitrary” the imposition of the fine by an official of the Comprehensive Supervision Directorate of the Habana Vieja municipality, an entity in charge of supervising compliance with the provisions established in the law to prevent indiscipline and illegalities.
“The Police is also lending itself for that, to support the inspectors who are coming here to fine people, people who have documents and who pay their taxes,” said Font Carreño, who claimed to have been fined for stopping for a few minutes. to greet a friend.
“Nowhere in the world do you see these types of fines. This fine was imposed for stopping to greet a person; This is nothing else seen in Cuba and the Government supports that”, denounced the aggrieved party.
Likewise, the forklift operator Guillermo Cabrera García, who has been fined more than 10 times in recent months, complains that the inspectors “always find justification to fine you.”
“There is an inspector who, even if she sees you walking, stops you and gives you a fine; wherever she sees me, she is fined up to one, ”said García, recently fined 1,500 pesos.
The old man considered that there is “repression” on the forklift operators who do not enter into “business with the inspectors”, who, according to García, demand large sums of money in exchange for letting them work in peace.
“Those who don’t have a license are caught and nothing happens, and those of us who have (the inspectors) don’t stop fining us,” said the old man.
For his part, Oscar Macías Gómez described the actions of the DIS as “an injustice, because it cannot be that the same things happen every day every time the inspectors come here, and the only ones who are providing food to the people of Cuba is the forklift drivers, because the government does not give anything,” he pointed out.
On the subject, a DIS official from the Habana Vieja municipality, who preferred not to be identified for fear of reprisals, explained that the inspectors only comply with what is established in current legislation.
“In the case of the pedicab drivers, they know that they cannot stand in places where the law prohibits it, and much less ride a piquera; however, they do. Regarding cart drivers, their license specifies that they must be moving and that they can only stop when they are going to make a sale; they can’t park permanently anywhere, and they do, too,” he noted.
“Of course, it does not mean that we inspectors cannot take into account, for example, the age of the person, and that they make a stop because they are tired of dragging a wheelbarrow all day. But that is already a human evaluation of the inspector. Although I recognize that within our offices there are extremist inspectors, I assure you that they are the fewest”, he concluded.
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