Manzanillo truck and bus drivers fight every day to get fuel
14ymedio, Juan Matos, Manzanillo, 24 March 2024 — It is five in the afternoon at the Manzanillo bus terminal stop, in the province of Granma, and people can’t take it anymore. The heat is around 33 degrees (91F) and the packages – almost everyone carries a basket or sack – will be the most difficult thing to get onto the truck that has just arrived. Slowly, with a white and green casing, and a strong stench of diesel, the vehicle parks and opens its hatch.
It charges 200 pesos for the trip of about 50 kilometers to Bayamo and shares the road with other private trucks – also green and heavy – that barely maintain the connection between Manzanillo and other nearby municipalities. The implementation of the new fuel prices not only extinguished the circulation of state buses, but also complicated life for private transporters
But he who invented the law, the saying goes, cheated. “I’m not worried that the diesel is unavailable,” one of the drivers on that vital route between the two large cities that are vying for prominence in that two-headed province tells 14ymedio. “I have my contacts in several service
