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Raul signs decrees on idle arable land, wages

Raul signs decrees on idle arable land, wages
By Larry Moonze in Havana, Cuba
Sunday July 20, 2008 [04:00]

CUBAN President Raul Castro has signed two decrees to redistribute idle arable land and another on wages and conditions of service for retired teachers called to duty. President Raul signed Decree-Law Number 259 authorising the handing over in usufruct of idle state land to individuals and legal entities for using in a rational and sustainable form, in line with the land's suitability for agricultural production.

President Raul has insisted on reviving agriculture to halt import dependency. Cuba's food imports this year would cost US$2 billion.

The decree on usufruct land is granted for a period of up to 10 years in the case of individuals and up to 25 years in the case of legal entities.

The maximum amount of land to be distributed to individuals without any land would be 13.42 hectares and, in the case of those holding land as their own property or in usufruct, they could increase it up to 40.26 hectares.

President Raul has asked Cubans to make idle land productive.
"We have to definitively reverse the trend of the declining area of cultivated land which, between 1998 and 2007, in just nine years, has been reduced by 33 per cent - one third of all cultivated land - and considerably influenced the limitations imposed by the Special Period," he said. "To put it in a few words, we have to go back to the earth."
President Raul said there already was a clear strategy and a plan of action from a national level to the productive base about how agriculture and cattle-raising in Cuba should be at this time when around 75 per cent of the population lived in urban areas.

"For that reason every suitable hectare should be planted, primarily in the immediate periphery of every town and city. We will bring the land to the city so we don't have to take the city to the countryside. we'll start from there, with the united and conscious effort of all patriots. We will produce food, preserve the principles achieved by the Revolution and we will continue to move forward without neglecting defense for one minute," he said.

And according to Decree-Law No. 260 published on Friday in the official Granma Daily, it authorises retired teachers and professors (lecturers) with the capacity to contribute their professionalism and experience, to receive, on a provisional and exceptional basis, the full salary of any teaching job they may fill, plus their pension.

"This decree has been expedited for convenience until the new Social Security bill is approved," it stated.

The current social security Act establishes that retirees can participate in paid work on the condition that the total of their new salary and their pension does not exceed the salary they received prior to receiving their pension.

Labels: CUBA, LAND REFORM, RAUL CASTRO

posted by MrK @ 3:43 AM