«The authorities have failed that population group»

An 80 -year -old is sitting in a wooden armchair in the room of her house in Guantanamo, while a group of rats leaves the interior of the house and walks between her feet. She looks at them at times and does not flinch.

His name is Irina Peña Paz and lives on Luz Caballero, number 653a, according to the information Shared on Facebook by Yosmany Mayeta Labrada. According to the independent journalist, the neighbors have communicated the conditions in which the retiree lives to government entities of the province and actions have not been taken in this regard.

What the video shows is not an isolated fact. In social networks the Complaints of members of civil society and organizations about the situation of the elderly on the island and the institutional abandonment they face.

The Cuban elders, the only group of the population that has grown in recent years, are also the most affected by the aggravation of the systemic crisis that the country is going through, experts say. The shortage of resources in essential areas such as health and food, the increase in the cost of living, the decrease in social assistance that the State previously offered, and the impact of emigration on family and community networks, are some of the factors that have reduced the quality of their lives.

«In particular this has affected the elderly and within the elderly, who are lived alone,» explains Cuban sociologist Elaine Acosta, and indicates that the elderly, who represent 25% of the population of the island, have less resources and social assistance than 10 years ago.

In addition, «it is a context where inflation has been growing and the pension they receive has decreased their value and purchasing power,» says Acosta.

The country’s average retirement does not exceed 1,528 pesos per month, less than the minimum wage set at 2,100. To eat «the minimum» per month, an old man who only has retirement to sustain would need more than 12 payments, according to a recent study of the cost of living in Cuba conducted by the economist Omar Everleny, in which he concluded that on the island «there really is a lack of extraordinary income and that there are people living under the poverty line set by the United Nations Organization (UN).»

Based on state assistance is not an option for older adults on the island. «The entire social protection network offered by the State has been significantly reduced,» says the expert.

Acosta points out that the authorities have systematically failed in recent years in the attention to this group of the population, «in the first place because they do not know the existence of poverty, do not recognize worsening or aggravation in the living conditions of the population, do not publish data in this regard and therefore cannot formulate appropriate policies to meet the growing needs of this population group,» he says.

According to the sociologist, a set of reforms in the care that the State provides to older adults «from the material and human resources that are being assigned for their attention, to the programs and, above all, facilitating the role of civil society and many programs that exist in the community and that could be attending to these people, complementing the work of the State and that yet have many obstacles to do their work, are required.