HAVANA, Apr. 28th   “If this is going on in Havana, what will happen in the countryside?” asks a man from Camagüey after Cimex announced the reorganization of gas stations in the capital on Tuesday.

The fuel shortage, despite the arrival of oil tankers in the ports of the Island, is at the limit, and Cubans know this after the Government’s decision to suspend the May Day parade, the most important annual event .

Cimex is a state-owned conglomerate part of the GAESA military consortium. It issued a press release to give an image of transparency and to call for calm, but customers understood little about a text that delegates to others measures that aren’t taken.

Guarantee the constant flow of sales by increasing turns, appoint people to organize the work at each gas station, remind the branch heads that they must inform the population, organize “quick response services,” handle customer complaints, strengthen collaboration with the authorities to act if necessary … a whole list of empty ideas. The population barely understood one of the measures, the only tangible one:

“There is a ban on the sale of fuel in any type of container, except in vehicles for transport, up to the established limits,” says one of the “organizing actions.” The people of Havana also sensed what can be expected from the vague final proposal.

“A system has begun experimentally to improve the organization of the gas lines together with the factors of the community, and a computer application with the same purpose is in the process of being tested,” concludes the Cimex note.

Hours later, in the Havana Tribune, the president of the Popular Council of Rampa, Pedro Lizardo, was praised as “a self-sacrificing, disinterested and hard-working person,” who created a WhatsApp group to manage the issue.

“It will no longer be necessary to spend whole days and early mornings to acquire fuel. In that application, the amount of fuel received by Cupet will be given, and the number of cars that it can serve.

That is, you get on the list, take your number, and you shouldn’t go until you consult WhatsApp, where you can see the numbers for the people who can get fuel,” celebrates the author, who asks for a very tall order for the country.

But on social networks, praise was as scarce as gasoline. “I understand that it’s 10 gallons per car,” one user said. I have a Polaco car; the tank is small and I can only put in 5 and will lose the other 5 gallons because I can’t bring a container. So they get the other 5, and the abuse continues,” he concluded, supported by another user.

People are burning with anger, but Ulises Guilarte, secretary general of the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC), attended the television program Mesa Redonda to talk about the cancellation of the May Day parade. He called for the development of substitute activities “with a vision that embraces the values of patriotism, unity, joy, and commitment.”

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