Workers fired for selling 15,000 apples to one client

Havana, Cuba - Several employees of a Cuban supermarket have been fired for selling 15,000 apples to a single customer in a country regularly plagued by food shortages.

State news outlet Granma reported that the employees involved were let go after news of the sale first broke on the blog of a Cuban journalist, who witnessed it at a supermarket in Havana.

A group of ‘young, husky people’ who were ‘organised in a quasi-military’ way appeared at the store and bought 150 cases of 100 apples, according to journalist Iorel Sanchez, who said all the fruit was for a single customer.

The buyer paid the equivalent of 45 cents per apple, according to receipts published in the blog post. It is not un- common in Cuba - regularly hit with shortages on staples including fruit, butter and milk - for a trader to buy a large stock of food to resell it at a higher price.

Granma said eight employees of the store - owned by Cimex Corporation, which is state-run but subject to the laws applicable to private enterprise - had been dismissed.

Cuba imports almost all the food consumed by its 11mn inhabitants, including apples, according to the official site Cubadebate. The island is seeking to reform its Soviet-style economic model: A new constitution to replace the 1976 version has been approved by parliament and submitted to public debate.