HAVANA – The number of private individuals who legally transport
passengers in Cuba almost doubled in the first half of 2009, after the
government last December unfroze the granting of permits for the
activity after a nine-year hiatus, the official press reported on Wednesday.
Communist Party daily Granma said that so far this year Cuban
authorities have authorized 2,848 operators licenses for private
transport services, an increase of 81 percent, and that in June 1,280
applications were being processed.
In December 2008, when the issuance of such permits for individuals was
resumed – as President Raul Castro had announced month earlier that it
would be – there were 3,486 of the licenses extant on the communist island.
The paper said that 30 percent of the permits were granted to operate
such services in Havana.
The head of the State Traffic Unit, Jose Conesa, said that the issuance
of the licenses had allowed the government to regularize an activity
that "was going on, in the majority of cases, improperly and illegally."
Many individuals who have taken advantage of the new law were offering
such services illegally before, given that the granting of the permits
was suspended in October 1999 despite the scarcity of transport on the
island.
The first permits for the activity were granted in 1996, in the middle
of the "special period," Cubans' euphemism for the deep economic
depression their country slid into after the collapse of the Soviet bloc
and the drying-up of the heavy subsidies Moscow had provided to the island.
In May, capital transit authorities announced that they were going to
step up their pursuit of transport service providers operating without
the requisite permit.
People who offer such services illegally face fines and even the seizure
of their vehicles, in the case of repeat offenders. EFE
Latin American Herald Tribune - Private Transportation Permits Doubled
in Cuba So Far in 2009 (9 July 2009)
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=338813&CategoryId=14510
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