Tag: Cuba

• Wednesday, March 2nd 2011 - 07:00 UTC

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

  

  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.

• Sunday, February 27th 2011 - 23:23 UTC

  Cuba elected as vice-president of the UN Special Committee on Decolonization

  

  Cuba was elected last week vice president of the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization, also known as the Committee of the 24, exclusively in charge of promoting a decolonization agenda.

• Wednesday, February 2nd 2011 - 14:30 UTC

  Castro tells bureaucrats to end waste, improvisation and listen to people’s concerns

  

  President Raul Castro called on the Cuban government to eliminate waste and provide more efficient and improved quality services while keeping “feet and ears on the ground” to closely listen to Cubans concerns regarding the economic reforms recently put into practice.

• Friday, January 28th 2011 - 19:13 UTC

  Cuba: Reportedly Still Holding A Hundred Political Prisoners

  

  The Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation says that the island's communist government is still holding a hundred political prisoners, in spite of releasing numerous imprisoned dissidents last year.

• Monday, January 17th 2011 - 12:16 UTC

  Washington makes access to Cuba easier

  

  New guidelines announced Friday by Obama administration making travel and remittance to Cuba easier for US citizens.

• Thursday, January 6th 2011 - 23:14 UTC

  Cuba: Massive cruise liner docks in La Havanna to much fanfare

  

  A salsa band, dancing schoolchildren and showgirls in bikini tops and feather headdresses welcomed some 1,500 tourists on a British cruise liner that officials described as among the biggest ships to visit Cuba in years.

• Thursday, January 6th 2011 - 12:56 UTC

  Cuban trade unions “guarantors” of the elimination of 500.000 state jobs

  

  Layoffs planned to eliminate some 500,000 state jobs in Cuba this year got underway this week, according to the island’s only legal workers’ organization. The official weekly Trabajadores cited a speech by CTC chief Salvador Valdes in the eastern province of Holguin, in which he said it was the union’s responsibility to “be the guarantor” of the process of labour reorganization.

• Thursday, January 6th 2011 - 11:48 UTC

  Cuban reforms on the move: soap and toothpaste eliminated from monthly ration

  

  Cuba’s government, trying to save money and eliminate subsidies announced this week it will remove soap, toothpaste and detergent from the monthly ration of food and consumer products it has handed out since the early days of the Cuban revolution.

• Monday, December 20th 2010 - 05:45 UTC

  “Too much secrecy, too many lies” have taken the revolution to a critical situation

  

  In a dramatic speech to the National Assembly Cuba’s Raul Castro said he wasn’t elected to restore capitalism nor to surrender Socialism but admitted that “too much secrecy and too many lies” had taken the revolution to a critical situation: “either we rectify or we will plunge from the cliff and the efforts of entire generations would be lost”.

• Friday, December 3rd 2010 - 06:21 UTC

  Havana launches debate on neo-capitalism and “the future of the Cuban Nation”

  

  Cuba began this week a public debate over landmark plans to lift the island's struggling economy and “preserve the revolution’s victories” by liberalizing some private enterprise, admitting small farmers private property, streamlining the vast state bureaucracy by leaving redundant a half-million workers.