Transportation: “Legalizing is a punishment” complain tricycle drivers in Holguín

Holguin/“What is most annoying are the cumbersome procedures that have to be done.” The phrase, said with fatigue and anger by a Holguin native who knows the electric tricycle business from the inside, summarizes better than any official announcement what is happening in the city. The Government barely tolerates a service that it urgently needs, but at the same time strangles it with charges, paperwork, queues and corruption.

At this time, says Damián – not his real name – the tricycle is “the most abundant and viable option for transportation” in Holguín. It is one of the few resources left for people to move around in a city plagued by a lack of fuel, a shortage of buses and the general collapse of public transportation.

The most visible modality is the fixed route. They are tricycles that cover the section “from the Balearic Islands to the Lenin hospital, approximately four kilometers.” The real price, he says, is 100 pesos per person. “And it is money that can be paid.” The figure contrasts with the rate that, according to what he says, the state authorities want to impose: 50 pesos per passenger. “The tricycles are charging 100 because if not, imagine,” he explains. Even so, he adds, “they have to take several trips to be able to get some money.”

The distance between the dreamed official rate and the price imposed by reality once again shows the same problem as always: the State tries to control the numbers, but cannot control the costs. The blackouts directly affect tricycles, parts become more expensive, food prices skyrocket and the peso sinks, but the administrative order is still to charge less.

Transporting passengers on cargo tricycles or electric motorbikes could cost fines of between 5,000 and 16,000 pesos, in addition to sanctions on the license and even immobilization of the vehicle.

The paradox in Holguín is even starker because, until just weeks ago, transporting passengers on cargo tricycles or electric motorbikes could cost fines of between 5,000 and 16,000 pesos, in addition to sanctions on the license and even immobilization of the vehicle. TO end of februaryHowever, the authorities began to issue temporary permits so that these vehicles could also carry people, a decision presented in response to the fuel crisis. The measure included a vehicle census, current technical review and specific licenses according to the type of media. He also placed tricycles and motorbikes under the control of the piqueras and the Provincial Transportation Company.

But on the street no one talks about relief. “What hits the hardest is the amount of paperwork that has to be done when the special or exceptional permit they granted expires,” says the Holguín transporter. As he explains, this permit “supposedly expires” on May 31, although comments are circulating in the city about a possible extension until December. That last point has not been officially confirmed. What is clear to the drivers is that the exceptional permit does not solve anything, it barely buys time before forcing them to enter an even more tangled system.

Getting regularized costs, and it costs a lot. The source estimates that you have to pay 2,500 pesos in total. “On the one hand, they charge you approximately a thousand pesos each time,” he says. The piquera right alone is worth 300 pesos a month, and to that are added other charges and even contributions to the union.

Then comes another blow: at the Holguín State Traffic Unit, “the letter or permit is worth about 1,500 pesos”, money that, according to what he says, you have to spend “in one go” to leave with the authorization and the exceptional sticker. This calculation coincides with what was reported by this newspaper at the end of February, when several drivers placed the total cost of the process at around 2,500 pesos and indicated that the cost was around 300 pesos per month.

However, money is not the only toll. The other big cost is time. “It’s not that you make them in one trip and you already have the papers to be able to take a legally authorized ticket,” he laments. Each procedure goes its own way.

For the vehicle to pass without a problem, you have to bribe two to three thousand pesos to the people who give you that charge at the somatom.

First, the tax account in the bank. “I know people who have taken six to eight months to get that tax bill,” he explains, because of “long queues” and a bureaucracy that seems designed to immobilize anyone. Then you must present a work project to the corresponding municipal body to justify what you intend to do with the patent. Next comes the technical inspection, the famous “somatom”, and later the requalification as a professional driver.

It is in this chain where the corruption that accompanies almost all state procedures in Cuba emerges. “In order for the vehicle to pass well, that is, to pass without a problem, or for you to pass those kilometers without queuing, you have to bribe two to three thousand pesos to the people who give you that charge there at the somatom,” he denounces. “That is a pot of corruption.”

Damián’s conclusion leaves no room for embellishments: “That’s why people are wallowing and don’t want to get that patent or operating license.” Not because they reject legality, but because in Cuba becoming legal is usually another form of punishment. Holguín needs these tricycles because they solve what the State cannot solve. But instead of making their way easier, the authorities push them into a trap. And then they look for external culprits to justify the collapse.