12-6-05,9:42am

Two million Cuban workers received good news Wednesday morning, as the Cuban government announced that it would be increasing salaries, social security pensions and social assistance across the board.

According to local news agencies, 762,433 retired and social security pensioners who receive the minimum pension will receive a nine percent increase and the 443,837 pensioners in the second income bracket will receive a six percent increase. The raise is a just and deserved social acknowledgement of the millions of men and women who have dedicated a large portion of their lives to working for more than four decades towards the creation of a new society and that today stand firm, defending Cuba’s socialism.

This is the second increase in salaries this year, the first occurring on May 1, Labor Day, when more than 1.46 million people received increases in their monthly social security incomes, with the minimum pension salaries increasing by more than 150 percent and the middle pension income bracket increasing by 50 percent.

The 257, 038 families receiving social assistance got an across the board increase, which saw minimum social assistance payments increasing by 80 percent and by 40 percent in the middle bracket.

These increases were aimed at the lower income end of pensioners and retirees and made possible by the recent social and economic advances in Cuba. At the time, it was announced that further raises would be forthcoming in pension and social assistance payments, which now, only seven months later, have materialized.

Accordingly, all families receiving social assistance will benefit from a universal increase that will see minimum social assistance incomes rise by a further 9 percent.

These new increase will come into effect as of December 2005. They occur despite the genocidal US blockade of Cuba, and at the end of year where the Cuban economy was hard hit by drought, raising oil prices and one of the worst hurricane seasons on record. They constitute a new feat of the Cuban Revolution demonstrating its commitment to the people.

As Fidel Castro pointed out in an address at Havana University’s Aula Magna on occasion of the 60th anniversary of the beginning of his university studies: “…Cuba is rapidly advancing towards reducing inequalities and injustices that exist even today, this is after the Special Period when special measures where introduced that are starting to bear fruit. We are working towards the goal that every citizen can live off their work salaries and pensions, because we can’t forget the working class that has given so much to Cuba during all these years.”