Several concerns immediately arose among Cubans upon learning of the extension of the holidays on the occasion of the commemoration, on July 26, of the frustrated assault on the Moncada barracks, in Santiago de Cuba, by Fidel Castro in 1953. So the banks will not open? What will happen to the procedures in public offices? in the middle of the disastrous figures of production in the country, a full week off?
The concerns were observed in the comments to the notes that in the official media gave the news, last Saturday, that for the seventieth anniversary of the anniversary not only would July 25, 26 and 27 be holidays, but that “the convenience of declaring Friday the 28th as a non-working day was evaluated.”
“A non-working week! I hope that by 2024 we will overcome that, it is work and productivity time,” expressed the user Cocuyo. Along the same lines, Ruffini opined: “Too many rest days affect the economy.”
“A non-working week! I hope that by 2024 we will overcome that, it is work time and productivity”
More vehement was Ángel: “How do they do that, if what the country needs is for it to happen, uninterrupted chains, container stay payments. I don’t really know what they are thinking about.” And also Oslaida: “We all like to rest, but more production has just been collected, how? With practically no work for a week? I don’t understand, with so many people who live from the business and illegalities.”
Leonardo made his anguish over the scarcity that the country is experiencing ostensible: “Why more non-working days for more adverse situations, nothing comes to the butcher shops, to the wineries and everything is closed. Before it was rest and parties, now they are worries”.
Others, because of the closed offices, when in themselves they are a bureaucratic hole of negligence and inefficiency. Thus Alice: “The one who has an appointment at the notary’s office set aside by the application for when do they get it?”
However, the main concern had to do with the banks. “Will the bank guarantee the money in the ATMs for those days?” Victoria asked. “Is it possible to guide the people with the crisis we have to acquire cash for specific expenses, if the ATMs do not work?” Francisco Martínez Rodríguez suggested. “There is no money in the ATMs, nor is there anyone to replace it. A week of monetary fasting?” User Sachiel exclaimed.
The Banco Metropolitano issued a note this Tuesday to inform which branches will be open in the capital during these four days, starting with this Tuesday, and only part-time.
In the streets of Havana, the annoyance and restlessness in front of the ATMs is more than evident. Those visited by this newspaper have queues of more than half a block, all of them with people complaining.
“To have ATMs you have to have them charged all the time, not that they run out of money right away,” lamented a woman at the Belascoaín and Zanja branch, the only one open this day in the municipality of Centro Habana, only until 12:30. She, like many in line, fears that when the bank closes, the money in the ATMs will run out. “And this one, for example, doesn’t open until Friday,” she stressed. Another man replied: “We already battle every day with all the banks open, imagine now.”
Of the three Infanta ATMs, for their part, only two were working.
The warning from the authorities, which additionally recommends “using electronic payment channels for the acquisition of goods and services”, has only further exalted spirits. “They want to computerize the country and make payments electronic, but Transfermóvil and EnZona have failures all the time,” said a young man in the same queue.
In the markets, open until two in the afternoon, the outlook was also tense. In the outdoor food area of the Plaza de Carlos III, the discontent was due to the collection of very few cards to buy hamburgers (two per person and 90 pesos). In this regard, a woman protested: “Today they are working at their leisure, as they want, as if the country did not have the same hunger today, which is a holiday.”
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