On a recent national television program, the president of the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources of Cuba (INRH), Antonio Rodríguez Rodríguez, responded to a question from President Diaz-Canel about why 90% of responses in a recent survey said state water services were disastrous.[1]
The response: the water service is “marked by broken equipment, lack of maintenance and spare parts and accessories, that is, the obsolescence of the infrastructure, which prevents establishing an estimated time to resolve the problems, which currently includes the lack of fuel.”
Rodriguez added, “ the responses of the people “coincide with real problems that we have in different places, and affect both the water supply and the solution of leaks or the management of sewage.” This includes “thousands of liters of drinking water are dumped daily as a result of leaks.”
Another point made by Rodriguez was “there are times that we repair [a problem] poorly, that is, we don’t do the job as we have to do it, and we have to go back to the same place once or twice.” This often was due to “the lack of aggregates and cements.”
The Cuban Citizen Audit Observatory recently reported that despite having extensive reservoir systems, more than 67% of the Cuban population does not receive stable water in their homes” and “almost 2 million Cubans (1,884,000) do not have access to drinking water.”
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[1] There is no solution to the water crisis in Cuba, Diario de Cuba (May 6, 2024).