Extra! Extra!
An investigation by Juventud Rebelde, the official newspaper of the Union of Communist Youth, has found that over half of the State-run businesses surveyed in Havana had short-changed their customers.
The offences included beer mugs being only partially filled, taxi drivers charging almost five times the authorised meter rates, official price lists being hidden, and shoe repairers charging vastly inflated rates, according to the BBC.
A terrible state of affairs, to be sure, but hardly news to most Cubans, I would have thought.
What is news is the fact that the results of the investigation have been published at all - in a Government-controlled publication.
In a land where the tightly-controlled media rarely if ever, reports the all too obvious failings of the Castro regime, this is newsworthy in itself.
The offences included beer mugs being only partially filled, taxi drivers charging almost five times the authorised meter rates, official price lists being hidden, and shoe repairers charging vastly inflated rates, according to the BBC.
A terrible state of affairs, to be sure, but hardly news to most Cubans, I would have thought.
What is news is the fact that the results of the investigation have been published at all - in a Government-controlled publication.
In a land where the tightly-controlled media rarely if ever, reports the all too obvious failings of the Castro regime, this is newsworthy in itself.
posted by Luis M Garcia at 9:40 pm
2 Comments:
Last week, after shaking up the worker's union, Raul decreed a crackdown on corruption. Now juventud rebelde says that workers in state run businesses rip off their customers. How cynical. They're now going to blame the Cuban people for the Government's failures.
Here comes the crackdown. Juventud Rebelde tries to portrait itself indipendent of the regime, to expose the corruption that will give the regime the moral fuel to stop it. It is better packaged that way.
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