Some residents are forced to pay 3,000 to 5,000 pesos to receive water from tanker trucks, according to the official press
14ymedio, Madrid, July 15, 2024 — The reservoirs of Pinar del Río have abundant water, with 68% of capacity, according to Rolando González García, general director of the Hydraulic Use Company, just a month ago. However, a few meters from the León Cuervo Rubio hospital, in the middle of the provincial capital, residents like Maray García are forced to pay 3,000 to 5,000 pesos to receive water from tanker trucks. “It’s something unsustainable, and we don’t even understand why it happens,” she told the official newspaper Granma.
The newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba reviews the situation of supply in the province, which leaves a bleak panorama. The millions of pesos that have been invested in different works seem to have been thrown away because of the minimum result. In Maray García’s neighborhood itself, water enters through the supply network only once in 40 days, despite the fact that the 800-millimeter pipe that supplies it was built only 10 years ago and received, in 2022, new pumping equipment.
Hurricane Ian damaged the infrastructure, but the repairs carried out subsequently have been useless. More than two kilometers of pipes were replaced, but the time between water cycles continues to increase, and the pressure has dropped so much that the water doesn’t arrive.
The article gives an account of a series of repairs that are conspicuous by the absence of their impact. Among them is the floating outlet pipe system of the Guamá reservoir, whose investment amounted to one million pesos and which aimed to supply more than 17,000 people with an improved water quality, since it was going to be pumped from the reservoir to a water treatment plant and then to the general network. The result couldn’t be worse, since it has “a manufacturing defect” that prevents its use.
The result couldn’t be worse, since it has “a manufacturing defect” that
