Cuba: Mismanagement and Waste

Cuba loves to blame its economic problems on the US embargo. never mind that it did business with the US to the tune of $350 million in 2005, or that it gets free oil from Venezuela, or that it does brisk business with the European Union and Asia.

in addition to spending much-needed resources abroad in a bid to gain support, Cuba also is plagued by mismanagement and waste.

two such examples from one city in Cuba, Baracoa:

Baracoa, Cuba, October 21, 2006
by Mario Hechevarria Driggs

Baracoa, known nationally as a primary producer of coconuts, suffers a great misfortune because the coconut harvest is spoiling due to socialist bureaucracy.

Local farmers state that they are losing quite a lot of money because the coconut harvest has been ground to a halt because the government can't send trucks to pick up the coconuts due to a lack of gas.

A high-ranking government official responded to the puzzled farmers that "The gas we have is earmarked for the battle of ideas."

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Beginning September 21, 2006, crews from the Gaviota hotel enterprises (which is owned by the Army) arrived in Baracoa to dismantle and render inoperable all the television sets in the Porto Santo hotel. Those t.v. sets will be replaced by new ones. However, the t.v. set were relatively new, and could have been sold to the hotel staff or other locals.

Several of the hotel staff asked why the t.v. sets were not offered to them for sale, as they work hard to bring good service to the foreign tourists, or perhaps donated to local schools.

The crews responded that they had explicit orders to destroy the t.v. sets and nothing could be done about it.