Cuba tries to reduce social gaps in disadvantaged communities - IPS Cuba

Havana, Oct 7.- Julia Fis longs for the time to receive the keys to a comfortable home, similar to 18 that helps to lift in the community the commodore of the peripheral neighborhood of La Güinera, in this Cuban capital.

Fis, who for now resides with one of his two children in a rustic house in Managu, in one of the cataloged areas of disadvantaged in the city, where 2.2 million people live.

“I've been waiting for a decent home for 23 years.I am in a list for the allocation of a home, but for one reason or another, my case has been postponed, which I have informed through letters to higher instances (of the central government), ”Fis told IPS during a tour of theplace.

During the last weeks, 62 capital neighborhoods identified with the most complex social problems, began to receive the support of ministries and government institutions to solve some basic needs.

Such actions are not new in a country with a socialist political system, with programs for the protection of people and groups in vulnerability, and social protections related to universal and free access to services such as education and public health.

But July 11 protests in some 40 cities and locations in this Caribbean island country of 11.2 million inhabitants, evidenced some of the effects derived from the increase in social inequalities, analyzes indicate.

The Government has attributed the demonstrations to an "intense political-communal operation funded by the United States government", aimed at "encouraging riots and instability in the country", within an unconventional war scheme.

Politologists consulted by IPS argue that the discontent shown by a sector of citizenship externalized the overwhelming for the shortage of food, medicines and essential items, and the existence of businesses that sell some of these products in foreign currencies, but to which to which whichA significant part does not access.

The economic reorganization strategy initiated on January 1, although it included the increase in salaries and state pensions and subsidies for vulnerable people, in turn caused an increase in prices and high inflation that have reduced the purchasing power of numerous families.

To such a panorama is added the Washington embargo, in force since 1962, strengthened with more than two hundred measures during the administration of former president Donald Trump (2017- Jan 2021), and whose extraterritorial impact complicates access to credits, foreign direct investment and direct investment andLoans of the main international financial organizations.

Brechas

For three decades, the island suffers a structural crisis of its centralized economy, with low growth rhythms that negatively impact development plans.

Cuba lacks updated statistics that express how such factors have influenced the poverty line index, which makes it difficult to measure vulnerability and marginalization phenomena, have noticed social scientists.

However, the multidimensional poverty index (IPM), a tool for the Poverty and Human Development initiative of the University of Oxford and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), located the rate at 0.15 percent inThe Cuban population in 2017.

The IPM considers three dimensions of well -being -Salud, education and standard of living- each with indicators on tangible goods and services, beyond the monetary dimension of poverty.

Studies systematized by Cuban researcher María del Carmen Zabala in the 2008-2018 period highlight the disadvantages of some territories, such as those located in the eastern region, in rural areas and in neighborhoods without basic services in Havana.

For Zabala, the essential elements that make up the condition of poverty and vulnerability in the Cuban context are the insufficiency of income and other assets, fundamentally housing, both for the housing deficit and for its progressive deterioration.

At the end of 2020, Cuba had 3 946 747 homes of which 37 percent were reported to regulate and in poor technical condition, together with a housing deficit of almost 863,000 properties, they need official data.

Denisse Hernández, resident in October ten, the most populated in the 15 Havana municipalities, spoke with IPS on the renewal of public entities in its environment, such as a trade and a market of agricultural products.

But he said that “these actions are not very significant in the face of the deep and extensive work of reconstruction that needs, for example, the October ten road where houses are located very deteriorated hundreds, nor are the sites where a repair urged the most, a repair,as the old ice cream shop for the whereabouts of the viper or the streets itself ”.

Anyway, Hernández valued, "it is always positive for the community that something is remaked, although it is still so to do."

Contar con la comunidad

In addition to housing, the government strategy focuses on the solution of other problems such as drinking water supply, garbage collection, vial asphalting, repair of health networks, as well as the creation of spaces to bring services to areas to areasmore distant from the central nuclei of Havana.

It also proposes that disnunculated young people again study or have a job.

Among other concepts, the plan urges to identify the most urgent needs of each place, involve people in transformations, and support community projects, some with long experience in work with neighborhoods without institutional support.

“And why did we do not do it years ago?Because we were in a lethargy ... in an immobility and we have to recognize it, ”said President Miguel Díaz-Canel on October 1 during a meeting with the presidents of the governments of the 168 municipalities of the country, as well as the governors and secretaries of the partyCommunist (the only internal legal) of the 15 provinces.

The president, who recently toured capital neighborhoods, has urged the accompaniment of social science centers in this process.

Multidisciplinary teams of the Center for Psychological and Sociological Research (CIPS) and the National Institute of Economic Research (INIE), based in Havana, have dialogued with citizens, community leaders, social organizations and officials in the Timba neighborhood, in theMunicipality of Plaza de la Revolution.

"We have found urgencies related to the improvement of living conditions, habitability and public services," the social researcher Ovidio D´Angelo, a member of the CIPS work team, told IPS.

In his opinion, the main public policies must focus on “the priority attention of material and spiritual conditions of these social vulnerability zones;Training of capacities in neighborhood leaders and community work groups for the impulse of the impulse and projects, with the insertion of young people, with a gender perspective and social status ”.

He also added D´Angelo, urgent “deep changes in the styles of social communication and systematic multiactoral dialogue for decision -making with all levels of governments;in addition to the development of binding citizen participation mechanisms and popular control, among others ”.

The delegates (councilors), elected every five years by the communities, are a key figure in communication between neighborhoods and government structures, but their work is weighed by the lack of resources and effective power to specify solutions, they recognizecitizens and experts.

Since 2019, the country has a program for housing or subsidies for improvement, mothers with three or more children under 17 years.

So far they received 5700 attention from the more than 28,600 identified throughout the country, indicates the official information.

Ed: Eg