The authorities recognize that there are 600,000 people in Cuba with “affectations” in the supply of water
14ymedio, Havana, 4 September 2024 — Desperate over being without water for more than two weeks, the residents of the La Rosita neighborhood, in the Havana municipality of San Miguel del Padrón, took to the streets Tuesday night to protest. As seen in images shared by La Tijera on Facebook, dozens of people gathered and stopped traffic on the Calzada de Güines, after being 16 days without water. According to the text that accompanies the photos, the population also demonstrated over the lack of milk for children.
It is the most recent of the protests for this basic service, increasingly frequent on the Island. On August 25, the residents of the San Francisco de Paula neighborhood took to the streets in a “cacerolazo” — a protest consisting of banging on pots and pans — shouting “water”! They demanded the restoration of the service. Something similar was experienced a few weeks earlier, with demonstrations in Central Havana, Old Havana and Luyanó, where the protestors succeeded in restoring the supply.
The authorities acknowledged on Tuesday that currently more than 600,000 people in the country are affected by the lack of water. In a note published by the official newspaper Granma, the number of people who lack adequate access to water in Cuba has increased to 7%, according to the official report. In November of last year, the regime recognized that there were 450,000 people affected throughout the country, and by April the number was already around 500,000. However, according to other official data released last April, at the end of 2022 there were 5,689,476 Cubans who did not have “dignified access to water”; that is, half of the population.
In Cuba, half of the population does not have ’dignified access to water’
In a press conference held this Tuesday, hours before the protests in San Miguel del Padrón, José Antonio Hernández Álvarez, President of the Water and Sanitation Business Group – belonging to the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources – detailed that of the 600,000 affected and recognized by the regime, at least 27% are concentrated in the west of the Island, the most populated area. Provinces such as Pinar del Río and A