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 prevents its use
Another of the frustrated projects was the new pipe to improve the supply in Consolación del Sur, although the problem in this case is attributed to the population, says Robert Hechavarría, general director of the Aqueduct and Sewerage Company. Individuals connected directly to the pipe, with connections of more than an inch. The carelessness has caused the ends of the network to continue without receiving the water.
Another of the investments without results is in the Celso Maragoto people’s council and part of Jagüey Cuyují, where 10,000 people reside, pending an arrangement for ten teams to arrive for the re-pumping systems to improve the service. Already in 2022, after the authorities found that Pinar del Río had one of the worst supply situations on the Island, ten pumping teams had been brought in that should have meant an improvement, but it did not happen that way.
Granma says that some residents have benefited from “unquestionable improvements,” including those of Viñales – thanks to the installation of a floating pumping station in the El Salto reservoir – and Minas de Matahambre, which had water no more often and no less often than every 50 days until the municipality was equipped with a new pipe that “has allowed the cycles to be reduced.” The government media does not indicate how many days the population now receives water; the situation couldn’t get any worse.
“However, there are also places where the population does not perceive any change,” says Granma, quoting several residents to justify the immortal phrase. “We’re still working here. The service has not improved,” said a resident in the La Flora neighborhood.
“The water in this area was received one day yes and one day no, and then it was extended to two, to three, to ten, and at the moment it’s between 15 and 20 days. With those arrangements that were made after the hurricane, we are worse off than before,” says another, from the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes neighborhood.
“The water in this area was received one day yes and one day no, and then it was extended to two, three, to ten, and at the moment it is between 15 and 20 days”
One more, a resident – ironically – on Aqueducto Final Street, says pitifully: “They say it’s to send water to the old neighborhood. When they put in the pipe, we thought things would get better for us, but when we saw that they started to cover it without having connected us, our spirits fell.”
Testimonies of this type have led Deputy Prime Minister Inés María Chapman to recognize that in Pinar del Río, “many things have been done, but people do not see the impact.” Granma’s report, however, does not make clear the reasons for such frustrating results and argues, in a generic way, “human error and lack of rigor.”
Engines that burn up shortly after being installed, leaks in new networks, and irregularities in the operation of the valves have been recurrent evils that limit the scope of investments and rehabilitations, and cause many Pinareños today to feel that there is no correspondence between the resources that have been allocated to alleviate the problem of water and the effect achieved,” continues Granma, providing the usual voluntarist* solution: more organizing and planning.
In the middle of this year, Cubadebate published an extensive report with data on the water supply system in Cuba, which made the unfortunate situation clear. Barely 48% of the population has water daily in conditions of quality, availability and accessibility, a total of 5.4 million people.
In addition, 535,876 people, 6.1% of the population, do not have home supply service; and 475,404 receive water in tanker trucks for periods longer than every 15 days.
*Voluntarism: The principle or system of doing something by or relying on voluntary action or volunteers. (Source Merrriam-Webster).
Translated by Regina Anavy
