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The State's neglect of Cuban parcels continues: more than 160,000 lie in warehouses

Two years after recognizing the inadequacy of the country's state-owned courier companies, Manuel Marrero Cruz continues to meet with the sector's officials to 'put things in order'.

La Habana
Package processing at a Cuban state-owned courier company.
Package processing at a Cuban state-owned courier company. Granma

At the close of June 12, there were some 160,923 mail packages to be delivered to people in Cuba, of which 18,858 were more than 30 days late, reported the regime's newspaper Granma.

The report by the official outlet of the Communist Party was due to the fact that Manuel Marrero Cruz had met yet again with the officials of the companies in charge of the reception and distribution of the parcels arriving in the country, to "analyze once again" this problem.

Marrero Cruz stated that thus far this year 545 complaints have been received due to the deficient work done handling parcels. The first minister of the Cuban government ordered a review of the problems presented by companies such as Aerovaradero and Transcargo, which continue to have the most delays.

According to Granma, the official also referred to the issue of compensation for cases of thefts and the "diversion of resources" associated with the packages, but the report did not include details.

The company Transcargo has 18,446 undelivered packages more than 30 days late, almost the totality of the backlog in the country. Alejandro García Corrales, the official in charge of Ministry of Transportation's Maritime-Port Business Group, explained that "negligent actions by this company's management," and the massive arrival of packages between the months of March and May, overwhelmed storage capacities and brought deliveries to customers to a virtual standstill.

According to García Corrales, Transcargo's management "is being changed almost entirely, and operations have already resumed, but it will still take a few days to rectify the situation."

Evidently, the 22 measures issued by Council of Ministers’ Executive Committee to improve and streamline the operations of parcel delivery companies have not worked.

The massive arrival of parcels in Cuba in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic exposed the inefficacy of Cuba's state-owned companies in this sector, and in recent years there have been many scandals due to their defective operation.

In May Correos de Cuba announced that it would begin processing ten containers that had arrived from Panama ten months earlier containing dozens of tons of goods purchased by Cubans.

In 2021 the company Correos Habana del Este, which serves five municipalities in the capital, recorded 23 shipments stolen and 41 lost, though that figure is very conservative considering the number of complaints by Cubans filed with companies and voiced on social media.

In October 2021, the same newspaper, Granma, referred to the existence of more than 300,000 packages more than 30 days late or more. These figures were also offered at  a follow-up meeting attended by Marrero Cruz, where it was promised that in a matter of days the logjam generated by bureaucracy and excessive handling would be resolved. Eight months later, however, the situation has not changed much.

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