A general view shows the Plaza de la Revolucion in Havana, Cuba, on August 10, 2018. Photo: Reuters/Tomas Bravo

"We have seen people who appear to be beggars, but when you look at their hands, when you look at the clothes those people wear, they are disguised as beggars ... In Cuba, there are no beggars,” Labour and Social Security Minister Marta Elena Feito said on Monday, while testifying before a commission of parliament.

“They have found an easy way of life, to make money and not to work as is appropriate,” she said in a statement broadcast live on state television.

Her words struck a nerve in Cuba, where years of crisis marked by runaway inflation and scarcity of basic goods have left large swaths of the population living day-to-day and a small, but increasing number of visibly impoverished people on the street,

“These people, whom we sometimes describe as homeless or linked to begging, are actually concrete expressions of the social inequalities and the accumulated problems we face,” Díaz-Canel told the same commission on Tuesday.

“I do not share some of the criteria expressed in the commission on this issue,” he said.

Feito characterised people wiping wind-shields on street corners as possibly looking for money to get drunk, and those picking through garbage as unlicensed, self-employed recyclers dodging taxes.

"The economic crisis has exacerbated social problems … the vulnerable are not our enemies,” Díaz-Canel said.

The minister was not seen during broadcasts of Tuesday’s parliament session.