Issue # 1416      24 June 2009

Cuba:

Crisis won’t fall on the shoulders of its people

HAVANA: Cuba’s Labour and Social Security Minister Margarita González stated last week in Geneva that the crisis won’t fall on the shoulders of its people, that layoffs won’t be an option, and that no one will be unprotected.

“We’ll split available resources between us. No Cuban will be abandoned to his or her fate,” highlighted the top official at the International Labour Conference underway in that European city.

She commented that her country is not exempt from suffering the impacts of the global crisis, added to which are the damage caused by the US blockade of Cuba against the will of the international community and in spite of the 17 condemnations in the United Nations.

“No one can predict the ending or consequences of the economic and financial crisis hitting the world,” she declared. “What can be predicted is that problems won’t be solved with speeches, money injections for the banks that speculated or with meetings of powerful nations behind the back of the UN.

“As usual, we Southern countries are the ones that mainly suffer the consequences, contradictions and irresponsibility of the capitalist system of production, which has aggravated the crisis with the imposition of neo-liberalism and financial speculation,” she said.

She said the crisis will not be solved with technical or regulating measures, and much less by strengthening the role of financial institutions, the policies of which contributed to generate the current scourge.

She added that the International Labour Organisation is obliged to play an important role in the search for solutions, while defending the World Employment Pact, strengthening the structure of social protection and increasing public investment.

“The important role of that entity is also expressed in the protection of the principles and fundamental rights of labour, and particularly in the demand for the increase of resources destined to the Official Aid for Development,” she stated.

Granma

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