HAVANA, April 3 (Reuter) - Children asking for candy or money on the streets of Havana are increasingly pestering tourists in a country that claims to have eliminated begging.
The ruling Communist Party newspaper Granma said on Thursday that local authorities in historic Old Havana, which is both a tourist attraction and an area of poor and crowded housing, were taking steps to put children back in their classrooms.
These include warning parents and fining them if their children are repeatedly caught on the streets. The newspaper said that since these efforts began most children bothering tourists in Old Havana were now from outside the district.
While asking tourists for things was not in itself a crime, Granma said, the idea was to keep children from gravitating towards ``more dangerous actions'' such as ``robbery, prostitution, pornography, alcoholism and drugs.'' It did not estimate how many children were involved in pestering tourists in Havana.
Cuba's image has been tarnished amid economic crisis and an increase in foreign tourists in the last five years. Prostitutes are common in tourist areas and foreigners are often approached in the street with offers of cut-price cigars, which are actually well-packaged fakes.
12:48 04-03-97