Cuban Minister Resigns after Downplaying Poverty

Such scenes of acute need are common in Cuba, especially in Havana, as people in the communist run country grapple with runaway inflation, meager wages and food shortages, causing some to resort to panhandling or eating out of the trash.

The labor minister who denied this, Marta Elena Feito, who also oversees the social security system, "acknowledged her mistake and tendered her resignation," Cuban state media said on July 15, adding that she had shown a "lack of objectivity and sensitivity."

On July 14, Feito told a parliamentary committee meeting about measures to address poverty that people rummaging for food in garbage bins are in fact dressed up to look like beggars.

"When you look at their hands, when you look at the clothes those people are wearing, they are disguised as beggars. They are not beggars. In Cuba, there are no beggars," she said in statements broadcast live on state television.

Social media users in the communist nation reacted with outrage, posting photos of people eating out of trash cans.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel entered the fray on X on July 15 to lambast Feito's "lack of sensitivity."

Poverty levels have increased sharply as the Caribbean country reckons with its worst economic crisis in three decades, marked by shortages of food, medicine and fuel and daily power blackouts.

Source: Reuters