Latest news with #Cuban government
CTV News
16-07-2025
- Politics
- CTV News
Cuba fires minister who said beggars were all fakes
A woman searches through a dumpster looking for useful items, in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, July 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Jorge Luis Baños) HAVANA -- The Cuban government fired its labour minister after she was publicly rebuked by the president for saying the country's beggars were all phonies in disguise. A brief announcement Tuesday evening said Labour and Social Security Minister Marta Elena Feito had demonstrated a lack of 'objectivity and sensitivity on topics that are currently central to political and governmental policy.' The minister's remarks on live television on Monday were widely circulated on social media and became a lightning rod for popular frustration with years of economic crisis. 'We have seen people who appear to be beggars, but when you look at their hands, when you look at the clothes those people wear, they are disguised as beggars ... In Cuba, there are no beggars,' Feito said. 'They have found an easy way of life, to make money and not to work as is appropriate.' President Miguel Diaz-Canel addressed the comments in his own appearance before the committee the next day, saying they showed a lack of empathy and understanding of the roots of poverty. 'These people, who we sometimes describe as homeless or linked to begging, are actually concrete expressions of the social inequalities and the accumulated problems we face,' the president said. 'The vulnerable are not our enemies.' (Reporting by Marc Frank; Editing by Peter Graff)
CTV News
15-07-2025
- Politics
- CTV News
Cuban minister under pressure for saying country has no beggars
Cuba's labour minister denied there are beggars in the poor, Communist-run country in official testimony, prompting rare criticism by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel of one of his own ministers on Tuesday. 'We have seen people who appear to be beggars, but when you look at their hands, when you look at the clothes those people wear, they are disguised as beggars ... In Cuba, there are no beggars,' Labor and Social Security Minister Marta Elena Feito said on Monday, while testifying before a commission of parliament. 'They have found an easy way of life, to make money and not to work as is appropriate,' she said in a statement broadcast live on state television. Her words struck a nerve in Cuba, where years of crisis marked by runaway inflation and scarcity of basic goods have left large swaths of the population living day-to-day and a small, but increasing number of visibly impoverished people on the street, 'These people, who we sometimes describe as homeless or linked to begging, are actually concrete expressions of the social inequalities and the accumulated problems we face,' Diaz-Canel told the same commission on Tuesday. 'I do not share some of the criteria expressed in the commission on this issue,' he said. Feito characterized people wiping windshields on street corners as possibly looking for money to get drunk, and those picking through garbage as unlicensed self-employed recyclers dodging taxes. 'The economic crisis has exacerbated social problems … the vulnerable are not our enemies,' Diaz-Canel said. The minister was not seen during broadcasts of Tuesday's parliament session. Reporting by Marc Frank, additional reporting by Nelson Acosta; Editing by Rod Nickel
