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Regional News>Cuba Curbs Contact With Foreigners |
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HAVANA,
(Reuters): Cuba has ordered its tourism workers to not accept tips from
foreigners, in an effort to defend socialism that threatens to slash earnings
of employees whose work provides Cuba's main source of hard currency.
The order, obtained by Reuters late on Wednesday, to reject tips and gifts and limit other contact with foreigners was cast as a way to protect the purity of socialist values.
But some Cubans said the order was a throwback to Soviet-style control that existed before Cuba opened up to tourism and foreign investment in the early 1990s.
"This is what it was like in 1991, when we weren't allowed to speak to any tourist. We are going back to that again," said a former Varadero hotel barmaid.
UNDERMINING QUALITY SERVICE
"I haven't had the courage to read the resolution to my staff yet,"
said the manager of a five-star hotel in Havana.
The new policy may also further undermine the quality of service at Cuban hotels, where tourists frequently complain about cockroaches and bland food, and don't return, said the head of a U.S.-Cuba trade group.
A resolution signed by Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero ordered the 100,000 Cubans directly employed in tourism to"limit relations with foreigners to the strictly necessary."
It calls on tourism workers to "maintain a conduct faithful to the fatherland and respect for the constitution, the socialist laws and government policy."
For two years, President Fidel Castro's government has moved to restore
central command over Cuba's economy and curb the "corrupting"
influence and
creeping inequalities brought by foreign business, tourism and access
to hard currency.
The new rules took effect last week. They will undermine the quality of service by cutting incentives for Cuba's tourism workers, said shocked foreign hotel managers.
Cubans working in tourism earn average monthly salaries of $12-$15 paid to them in Cuban pesos, and rely heavily on tips to supplement their incomes. With tips, tourism work is one of the island's best-paying occupations.
The order says employees must turn over tips and gifts to their bosses. It also calls on employees to remain "vigilant" of actions and conducts that hurt the interests of the Cuban state.
Employees have already been informed in Varadero, Cuba's top beach resort, which attracts thousands of mainly Canadian and European tourists each year, the Havana hotel manager said.
The Cuban government reluctantly legalised dollar possession in 1993 as it opened up the country of 11 million to tourism to keep afloat, after losing massive subsidies and aid when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Before then, Cubans used their dollar tips to ask foreigners to buy them consumer goods in "diplomatic shops" they were barred from entering.
Tourism is now Cuba's main hard currency earner, and 2.1 million tourists visited the Caribbean island last year, an eight per cent rise over 2003. They stayed at dozens of hotels built over the decade at beach resorts and managed by foreign hotel chains.
Castro recently said Cuba's one-party state was "rising like the phoenix" from the ashes of its 1990s economic meltdown.
But John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, which monitors trade with Cuba, said the new order would hurt the tourism industry. "Employees will be scared to interface with guests," he said.
"Cuba's visitor demographic will continue to erode, limited to visitors who seek sun, sand, alcohol and food, not caring about quality, but about low price and quantity," he said.