MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Cuban reforms delayed: who and how do you sacks half a million state workers?

President Raul Castro faces a major challenge

Cuba's plans to lay off half a million state workers by the end of March are behind schedule, President Raul Castro has acknowledged. Castro, quoted by state television, said the timetable for the cuts would be altered to soften their impact.

The redundancies form part of plans to revive Cuba's struggling economy, an issue due to be discussed at a rare Communist Party Congress in April. The Cuban government currently employs about 85% of the official workforce.

President Castro, addressing a joint meeting of his cabinet and the Council of State, said given the lay-offs were behind schedule, the timeline would be adjusted, state television reported.

“A job of this magnitude which will affect so many citizens in one way or another cannot be marked by inflexible timetables,” the report quoted him as saying.

President Castro did not give a new target date for the planned redundancies, saying only that the overhaul of the economy would take at least five years. He again insisted that the reforms would “leave nobody behind”.

Last September, Mr Castro announced plans to lay off about a million state employees - about a fifth of the workforce - with half the jobs going by 31 March.

This would have been just three weeks before the first congress of the ruling Communist Party in 14 years.

Thousands of committees have been set up across the island to decide which jobs to eliminate and discuss the planned changes to the economy. According to state TV, the economy minister, Marino Murillo, said some seven million Cubans had taken part in a total of nearly 130,000 such meetings.

But resistance among those supposed to implementing the cuts has clearly had an effect.

As well as lay-offs, the Cuban government has been taking steps to ease some restrictions on private enterprise, allowing Cubans to apply for licences to run their own businesses, rent out rooms and in some case hire workers. Farmers have also been leased land, seeds and fertilizers in a desperate effort to boost crops and cut the huge Cuban food bill of imports mostly from the US.

President Castro has said that the reforms are vital to overhauling the economy, which is burdened by debt, costly social programs and government intervention in all aspects of the economy, and after decades of mismanagement a lack of work discipline in the bureaucracy and among the new generations.