HAVANA, November 29 (Juan Carlos Linares / www.cubanet.org) - To their
by-now-traditional complaint about poor bread quality, Havana residents are
adding a new one: they can't buy their meagre daily ration at all.
By the time they reach the counter at their assigned bakery, they say, they
are told to come back the next day because there is no more bread.
"And the next day, one is told to come back the next, and the next it's
the same, and so on, until one gets tired and scrapes together some money and
ends up at the free market bakery, where bread costs 10 pesos a pound,"
complained a resident of Arroyo Naranjo, a Havana suburb.
Earning an average salary of 247 pesos a month, Cubans have come to depend
on heavily-subsidized rationed-food purchases, but the system not always works
as planned.
"This bakery is getting an average of 10 sacks of flour a day, but to
meet our production quota, we need 50 sacks," said a baker in Diez de
Octubre municipality.
"The situation is really difficult," said a man whose job is to
distribute flour in Havana. He explained that users such as hospitals and dollar
establishments are given first priority, and then the remaining flour is
distributed to the popular sector "in the most equitable way possible."
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