Like other businesses across Cuba, Nel Paradiso is grappling with a worker shortage amid unprecedented levels of people fleeing the country.
In just more than a year, the restaurant in central Havana has seen 50 employees leave.
“There wasn’t enough time to replace the personnel,” hiring manager Annie Zuniga said.
Photo: AFP
After being forced to close its doors due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Nel Paradiso had been open for only two months when Nicaragua, an ally of Havana, in November 2021 abolished visa requirements for Cubans.
The move lead to the country’s largest exodus since communists took over the Cuban government more than six decades ago.
“Nicaragua’s opening was a blow... From 50 workers, in one week we were left with 30,” Zuniga said.
Of the 60 employees recruited during the past 14 months, only 10 still live in Cuba, the 26-year-old manager said.
Replacing employees that emigrate has become a time-consuming and costly task.
“We haven’t been able to create a united and lasting team because when we think: ‘Good, this is the team’ ... one of them comes to me and says: ‘This is my last week, next week I’m leaving.’ It’s a catastrophe,” Zuniga said.
Last year, US border authorities intercepted more than 313,000 Cubans who entered the country illegally, official data showed.
Most Cubans fleeing the country attempt to reach the US, usually via Central America.
However, sea crossings between Cuba and Florida — a treacherous 140km journey often made in unsuitable vessels — have also soared.
The wave of emigration comes as the country of 11.1 million people is aging and is wrangling with its worst economic crisis in three decades. Inflation is rampant, and daily lines to buy food and fuel are interminable, while it is near impossible to find many medicines and power cuts are frequent.
The lack of staff “puts us in difficulty,” Nel Paradiso head waiter Norberto Vazquez said.
Also a sommelier professor, Vazquez said he has trained more than 50 people who are no longer in Cuba.
“Some students tell me: ‘Professor, the only thing I’m thinking about is how I will leave,’” he said. “That gives me incalculable grief.”
Most Cubans that emigrate are highly educated and aged from 19 to 49, University of Havana data showed.
PANDEMIC DOWNTURN
Many industries are affected by the exodus, including tourism, a vital part of the country’s economy that was badly hit by the pandemic.
About 30 percent of employees at the Parque Central hotel, a business partly owned by the government and Spanish group Iberostar, emigrated and its executives were forced to contract students to cover the vacancies, a source said on condition of anonymity.
Frenchman Stephane Ferrux has been running a travel agency in Havana since 1995.
He said 60 of the agency’s service providers emigrated in one year, adding that it was not just for economic reasons, as some of them earned US$1,500 a month, a sum 45 times the Cuban average.
“When you cannot find anything” due to shortages of most products “and you feel you have no future, even if you have the means, that triggers the fleeing,” Ferrux said.
Even embassies and universities have been affected.
Last month, the “desperate cry” of a university science professor went viral on social media.
“The laboratories are emptying... The best ones are leaving,” the professor said.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel in October last year said that “emigration is high in Cuba,” and blamed US laws for encouraging it.
“Every young person who abandons their studies and work to emigrate” represents “a defeat” for the country, he said.
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