In the middle of the blackouts, Cubans take electric plants to state offices to attend them

Cubans are taking electric plants to banks, civil records and other state offices to attend them, in the midst of the constant blackouts that average the 20 hours a day in most of the country.

«There are many places that if you do not go with your power plant you cannot do the procedure,» news told a man of Placetas, Villa Clara, who asked not to be identified for fear of government reprisals.

«It’s very common these days,» he said.

This week the independent medium Diary of Cuba He published a report with testimonies of several residents in Caibarién, in the same province, about the situation. Helen Sánchez, one of the interviewees, said she had managed to finish the papers of the sale of her mother -in -law’s house thanks to a plant that lent a neighbor.

«The bank administrator gives us preference because, until they do not fix their plant (which has been broken for years) or bring a new one and give it enough fuel to turn it on, then the service will depend on people like us,» he explained.

But not all procedures are resolved in that way. Some efforts can only be completed if there is electricity in several institutions at the same time.

Most Cubans cannot assume the cost of a plant. Ernesto González, a Cuban who resides less than a year ago in the United States, bought a battery plant from his mother in Cuba. A few months before he had sent a gasoline to his grandparents.

“I decided to do the expense because I see the work that is happening with the current. The little food they get to be lost because refrigerators do not work with two hours of current per day, ”the young man told Martí News.

González spent about $ 1,700 between the two floors and shipments. The seghunta barely gives to connect a few equipment.

«My mother’s cost me much more expensive than gasoline, which was also more power, but she preferred that because she can put her inside the house and that of gasoline can be robbed in the patio. That without telling how difficult it is later to find the fuel,» he explained.

The average salary of a Cuban is not enough for «elementary» expenses such as food, transport, internet and other basic services.

A recent study by economist Omar Everleny, based on the maximum prices of food reported by the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), concluded that a person needs at least eight minimum wages to subsist on the island with «the minimum.»

In the case of retirees, who receive less, they need more than 12. This population group is one of the most affected by the systemic crisis in the country, and faces long lines to collect insufficient pensions for the lack of electrical service in banks and cash at the ATMs. Most do not even dream of having a plant.