Sugar, rice, cooking oil and coffee from the basic family basket top the list of what was stolen, worth two million pesos
14ymedio, Havana, 6 June 2024 — One hundred bodegas (ration stores) in Las Tunas were looted by thieves in 2023. So far this year, there have been eighteen. The authorities of the province expressed alarm about the events to the official press this Wednesday but did not hesitate to focus on the material losses and damages to the State, although it is the population that clearly suffers the most.
According to Periódico 26, of all the robberies that occurred last year in state entities in the province, the “booty” of the bodegas represents 84.7%, with two million pesos of reported losses. “Of the products, 43,900 pounds of brown sugar and 2,900 pounds of refined; 30,000 pounds of rice; 244 gallons of cooking oil; 1,000 packages of coffee; and 1,180 pounds of beans, preserves and peas fell into the wrong hands,” the newspaper listed, complaining that the residents had to see it disappear from the basic family basket “in one stroke.”
The most affected municipality was Puerto Padre, with 30 robbed bodegas and more than a half-million pesos in losses, a quarter of the total in the province.
“How have the thieves been able to act with impunity, to the extent that there are some stores that have been robbed several times?” asks Periódico 26, and it immediately offers the answer. According to reports from the Ministry of the Interior in the province, thefts occur between two and six in the morning, usually in premises with precarious security (bars on the windows, night guards) and with poor lighting, problems that it is up to the Directorate of Internal Trade to solve.
The provincial director of the ministry, Raymel Espinosa Saborit, told the newspaper that of the 692 bodegas in the province, about 100 are in poor condition and “lack security provisions,” and about half, 377, do not have guards hired by Commerce.
Espinosa explained that an analysis is currently being carried out in the province’s staff to offer custodian positions
Delving into this last point,