Matanzas/The blackouts are not just darkness and rice pots that cannot come on. In the city of Matanzas the lack of electric fluid especially affects bureaucratic procedures. The times to get a birth certificate and obtain a passport have been dilated due to lack of energy. This week, with more than 20 hours a day without supply, the situation brushes chaos.
Misladys visited the Office of the Directorate of Identification, Immigration and Foreigners of Cuba (DIIE) located on the central Middle street. To his surprise, after several disappointments, the premises had that morning with electricity and the waiting room was full of eager people to achieve their travel document. “This is a miracle because practically the entire city is off, from Peñas Altas to Versailles,” says La Matancera to 14ymedio.
The new normality that has spread throughout the island with the resurgence of the energy crisis is to expect the outlets to lack energy, the lamps are turned off, the air conditioners do not work and state officials are shielded in the blackouts so as not to provide the service. “There are places where they can continue attending the public but in this type of office almost every step needs electricity,” explains Misladys.
The process of obtaining a passport, automated a few years ago after the elimination of the departure permit, at the beginning of 2013, and the end of the so -called invitation letter, includes a protocol that “seems that of a sausage factory,” an old man is ironic sitting a few steps from the secretary that receives the identity cards and begins the procedure. The first step is to strain the personal identification in the hands of that official after having waited long hours in a row on the outskirts of the building.
/ 14ymedio
In the narrow room they do not reach the chairs for all who have arrived. “First we are going to finish attending those who have reserved shifts, and then we will continue with the order of the tail. Keep calm, please,” the employee asks. The first names that come out of their mouths are from customers who have already frustrated previously because the blackout interrupted their procedure when it was initiated, who are leveraged by an official organism or those who are friends of the staff.
“I have been in this for five months,” laments a young man who has come to legalize a document, a procedure that, together with the expedition of the identity card and the passport, are also carried out in the same office. Most of those who await are in a migratory process. Some come to obtain the document that allows them to address an airplane and others to conclude a procedure that has been asked for a relative or a resident friend already abroad. time matters a lot, because it can delay from the purchase of a ticket to obtaining a foreign citizenship.
After being called by the employee, the applicant is summoned to an office where they review his file, if he has previously had a passport or if he appears in the database as “regulated”, the euphemism with which everyone fear being labeled and which means a prohibition of exit of the country. If that obstacle is overcome without problems, then it is passed to another cubicle where the fingerprints and a photo take, to pass these details to the computer connected to the single national identification system (SUIN).
That step is “where everything can be annoyed,” says Misladys. “The other times I have come, they have told me that there is no electricity to turn on the computers or that, although they have light, they do not have access to the server to put the new data.” The problem is repeated so much that the amazing thing is that everything works and can happen from the initial waiting hall, to the last cubicle where they deliver a role to collect the new document.
But it is not enough to overcome that journey. The delivery deadlines of the travel document have also been dilated and now it has been late for up to seven weeks, of the two that came to take a decade ago when the Cuban immigration bomb exploded that seems to have no end. The problem extends to all spheres of everyday life. “If you go to a store you cannot pay, if you go to an ATM you can not get money,” List Misladys adds the situation of her husband, who “has been trying to obtain apropist account weeks and is about to give up” because every time he goes to the Municipal Directorate of Labor and Social Security, the procedures are suspended due to lack of electricity.
In a country that has been suffering for long blackheads, the lack of preparation shown by state entities before electricity cuts,
In a country that has been suffering long blackheads for years, it surprises the lack of preparation and alternatives shown by state entities before electricity cuts. A tour of the procedures offices, when there is no current, gives the impression that for the first time they face that difficulty: the service is paralyzed, the employees go outside so as not to suffer the heat and many times the working day is canceled until the next day.
For those who live far and have arrived in the city to carry out any bureaucratic process, frustration is greater. “We are from Ceiba Mocha and transport becomes very bad,” said a woman who, accompanied by her partner, waited on Tuesday in the main hall of the Diee office of the center of Matanzas. His greatest concern, having to return to his people without starting the procedure because a blackout in the middle of the day stops the process.
The bulb, located on top of the Cuban flag in a corner of the room, flashes. A cry of concern extends between those who wait sitting or standing for them to call them. It has been nothing, just a few seconds without electricity but the anxiety scale in the premises. For some it will be one of the last bitter drinks that must suffer before emigrating.
