In 2025, 38 workers died in Cuba, and the electricity sector, along with construction, suffered the most workplace accidents
14ymedio, Madrid, September 4, 2026 / Cuba’s Electric Utility (Unión Eléctrica) reported this Thursday the death, that same morning, of Edisvey Rolando Pérez Rodríguez, a 32-year-old lineman who was part of the brigade that had come from Sancti Spíritus to carry out maintenance work in Havana.
The state-owned company has not given further details about the cause of death, although it has made clear that he suffered a workplace accident. According to one of the colleagues who sent condolences, the young man – a native of La Sierpe – was doing maintenance work in Guanabacoa.
“My condolences to the family. We regret the loss of this young man. It is a profound sorrow for all of us who work in the sector and, above all, for those of us who had the opportunity to work with him. He was an excellent colleague and a devoted, committed worker,” read one of the many messages that employees of the Sancti Spíritus electric company left following the announcement of his death.
“I hope they empathize and decide not to send them to another province just to meet those needs, when they are needed here too”
Among the comments, some lamented the harsh working conditions endured by linemen, a job they described as exhausting and undervalued. “I hope they empathize and decide not to send them to another province just to meet those needs, when they are needed here too,” one user noted. “Perhaps the same thing would have happened to him here, but he would have been close to his family.”
UNE has been quick this time in reporting the death, a response diametrically different from that of last June, when 39-year-old Osmani Rosales Núñez, a worker for the Cárdenas Electric Company, lost his life. The lineman received a high-voltage electric shock while carrying out repair work in that city in Matanzas, but the state-owned company remained silent about the incident, on which only Tecnotur – the Ministry’s Technology, Solutions and Tourism Equipment Company – commented, since the deceased’s father worked there.
At the time, an electrical worker who contacted the media El Toque, denounced the conditions under which his work was carried out. “They are terrible and dangerous, lacking all safety and protection resources,” he stated, adding: “The harnesses and safety belts for working at height are in terrible condition and there are barely any. Sometimes one is available for the whole brigade, when it should be personal equipment.”
The worker explained that there were also no uniforms, boots, or helmets, and, worst of all, there are barely any dielectric gloves for working with live current. “If a cable falls, we have to think about where to remove one that’s out of use to repair it with; if a transformer, or ‘lechera’ (milk can) as it’s called on the street, burns out, we have to think about where to take a less-used one from to provide service to the population, and it’s all like that because the warehouses are bare, grim,” he denounced.
In September 2025, Cleivi Pujada Castro lost his life while carrying out repair work on a circuit at the Playa Baracoa substation in Bauta, Artemisa province. The UNE worker died after coming into contact with a high-voltage line, according to the account of a colleague who reported what happened.
“The harnesses and safety belts for working at height are in terrible condition and there are barely any. Sometimes one is available for the whole brigade, when it should be personal equipment.”
A different fate, days earlier, befell Osmani Hernández Madroza, 35, who suffered burns while working on a fault in San Miguel del Padrón, repairing a conductor. The lineman had both arms amputated as a result of the burns. In March 2024, Leonel Carroso Machín, a lineman for the Havana Electric Company, died after falling from a pole in the municipality of Boyeros.
Workplace accident statistics in Cuba confirm that this is, after construction, one of the sectors with the most accidents and fatalities. In 2025, there were 664 incidents in which 38 workers died and 701 were injured. The electricity sector accounted for five deaths, half as many as construction and the same number as gas and water supply.
Although there were more deaths in 2024 – 52 nationwide and 7 in the electricity sector – the decrease could be explained not only by the decline in the general population, but specifically by the loss of UNE workers. Between 2021 and 2023 alone, the company lost 15,000 workers by its own account, a situation that has worsened in recent years. The workforce numbers around 40,000 workers, but the Ministry of Energy and Mines has repeatedly stated that there is a labor shortage and that increasingly less-qualified personnel are facing complex tasks due to the lack of replacement and qualified staff.
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