Cuba is restructuring its rickety postal service to boost efficiency, decentralizing the monolithic entity in favor of a state-run business group made up of largely autonomous regional offices.
Empresa Correos de Cuba, which employs some 13,600 workers and operates more than 1,000 post offices, 16 processing facilities and 54 delivery centers, will be reshaped around the middle of next year into 18 regional and two national entities, according to this week’s edition of the government financial magazine Opciones.
The stripped-down structure will be followed by a gradual program of improved internal controls, modernized facilities and updated technology.
The nascent business group’s director for national strategy, Raul Marcial Cortina, said each regional entity will have leeway to adapt service to local needs.
“It was unthinkable that a business so big could be perfected. … This will bring a positive impact on efficiency and benefits for the workers,” Marcial Cortina was quoted as saying.
In Cuba, things like Internet usage, email access and financial infrastructure lag behind much of the developed world, and many rely on the postal service for everything from mail to money transfers. Letters to the editor in state-controlled media routinely complain about slow delivery, poor customer service and packages being opened en route, with their contents vanishing.
“This is excellent news. I use the postal service often and have lost count of how many letters have been stolen from me by Correos de Cuba. … And don’t even mention their handling of claims,” said a comment left on the government website Cubadebate by a reader who identified himself as Raul.
“They say, ‘Better the devil you know than the one you don’t,’” it continued. “But in my case I’m dying to meet the new one because the one we have is up in flames.”
Opciones did not say whether there will be office closures or layoffs, or give detailed information about how the new group will operate.
President Raul Castro’s government is implementing a series of reforms to pep up Cuba’s flagging economy, such as legalizing the sale of homes and cars and letting more people open up small private businesses.
Authorities are also looking at laying off hundreds of thousands of government workers and restructuring inefficient state agencies.
The Communist Party newspaper Granma last week published details of a major overhaul of the sugar industry, saying Cuba would shutter all but 26 of the 178 bureaucratic entities associated with production.
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
