The Revolution’s Pensioners

The Revolution's Pensioners / Reinaldo Emilio Cosan Alen
Posted on April 13, 2014

HAVANA, Cuba. Jose Manuel Rosado, 74 years of age, from Havana del
Este, stands in line at four in the morning to be among the first to
"fill up his checkbook."

The bank opens at 8:30 for multiple transactions. Many other people
like Jose Manuel will wait patiently, on foot, whether in intense sun or
cold and rain if it is winter, in order to cash their retirement. Jose,
his two-hundred forty pesos (ten dollars average), which will vanish in
the first food purchases and payments for services.

Maria Victoria, 81 years old, stands in line in front of Branch 286 of
the People's Savings Bank — a state bank — in the San Miguel del Padron
township:

"I retired at 65. I was a cook in a business the last thirty. I worked
another eight years. The money goes to deficient nutrition. I
"resolved" my food at my work, do you understand, for my home. Now I
almost cannot walk because of my ulcerous legs, I am diabetic. I rent a
pedicab to go get my cash. A dollar going, another returning. Fifty
pesos spent, but it is dangerous to walk through broken, dark streets,
exposed to robberies to go to the bank."

She pays another fifty pesos monthly on installment for a bank loan for
the purchase of her Chinese refrigerator. She has paid off five years,
five are still left.

Build up for whatever official or individual management: mail, Currency
Exchange, tax payment, liquidation sale and transfer of property and
vehicles, fines, repayments, deposits, bonds, required seals–foreign and
national currency–monthly payments for dwelling, loans retirement and
pension payments. Craziness!

Pensioner Eloy Marante, 76 years old, pays triple the tax for his
courier license. Day by day, he loads, transports and distributes gas
cylinders to homes with his tricycle, in order to obtain a supplement
for his lean pension.

"We run errands in the warehouse, attentive to if they are selling the
piece of chicken allowed to those on a special "health diet." We pay
electricity, telephone, gas. We take the little kids to school and pick
them up; take the snacks to the kids in high school, also we do favors
for neighbors for a small tip. Jobs that the family throws to the old
people. The worst: standing in unending lines to exchange bills for
coins because business clerks and bus drivers say they don't have
change! An fraud*,because the government does not demand
responsibility. . ." says Jose Manuel.

Milagros Penalver, director of Budget Control for the Ministry of Labor
and Social Security, says there are 672,568 retirees and pensioners out
of 2,041,392 people over 70 years of age, according to the Population
and Household Census of 2012.

Significant is the prediction by the Center for Population Studies and
development of the National Office of Statistics: 33.9 percent of the
population will be over six decades old in 2035. The birthrate
continues in permanent decline because of factors so adverse to procreation.

*Translator's note: The fraud is refusing to give the customer coins and
so the business or bus driver "keeps the change."

cosanoalen@yahoo.com

Cubanet, April 11, 2014, Reinaldo Emilio Cosan Alen

Translated by mlk

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