Protest in Holguin town gets power restored. Electricity deficit continues to set records with demand forecast at 50% on Wednesday
14ymedio, Havana, 16 October 2024 — About thirty people demonstrated on Tuesday in Sancti Spíritus because of the endless power outages in the city. “They took to the streets because of the blackout problem at about 8:30 pm,” an eyewitness told this newspaper. It happened in the Pina neighborhood, on Soviet Avenue.
“It was all because the power was turned off at five o’clock in the afternoon, three hours ahead of schedule,” explains the same source. The protest resulted in the arrest of two people, who remain in custody on Wednesday.
More fortunate were those who took to the streets on Tuesday afternoon in Báguanos, Holguín, to protest for the same reason. They were not many, but they were forceful. “We want electricity, we want electricity!” shouted about 40 or 50 people, accompanied by clapping hands, gathered in the town’s central park, a little over 30 kilometers from the provincial capital.
According to a local resident who told 14ymedio, they got what they were asking for half an hour after the protest began, and the authorities returned the electricity to the municipality. “At least I did not see anyone who went to talk to them”, he answers when asked if any official spoke to the crowd. Nor, he assures, did any police officers show up, nor were there any detainees. “That surprised me because people have been beaten up in other places right away”.
As can be seen in images shared on social networks, among the demonstrators, which included the elderly and children, a man shouted: “Come on, gentlemen, let someone come here, let someone give an explanation to these people who are here in the street, someone with power to explain to these people, because every day they take it [the electricity] away”.
Let’s go, gentlemen, let someone come here, let them explain to the people who are here in the street.
Although someone can be heard behind the camera expressing suspicion about “that guy who comes around with a stick in his hand,” no one is seen attacking the group. “As soon as the power was back on, everyone began to disperse.”
The province of Holguin is one of those that suffers most severely from power outages. Its inhabitants are getting used to having up to 15-hour blackouts, that is, only nine hours a day with electricity. “And they take it away at uncomfortable hours, for example from 12 to 3 in the morning, when you go to bed,” laments a Holguin mother. “Then you wake up, or at least I don’t sleep, because I have to get up to remove the battery chargers from the tricycle and other devices, and three hours later, when the electricity comes back on, you have to get up again to plug everything in. It’s a total nuisance.
Due to this energy crisis, food shortages are compounded by the extreme difficulty of cooking food. On Monday, says the same neighbor, they began to sell liquefied gas at the distribution points, “and people are catching their breath a little bit”, this Wednesday the propane cylinder virtual store was expected to be available.
On top of that, says her husband, given that Holguín is a densely populated territory, the “blocks” in which the Electrical Union (UNE) divides the zones to ration energy “are huge”: “If they remove block 1 and block 2 and leave block 3 and 4, half of the province is without power”.
Those who are most affected, he says, are the small municipalities: “Even though they are close to the city, they seem to be far away”.
This Tuesday, the 1,378 megawatts (MW)shortage that UNE (National Electricity Company) predicted for the peak times on the island, which already represented a record since September, ended up being 1,641 MW. It was precisely at the time of highest demand that the residents of Báguanos gathered.
The “planned maintenance” of the Cienfuegos power plant, together with several units of other thermoelectric plants that have broken down, is making the situation more difficult than ever. The scenario does not improve this Wednesday when a maximum deficit of 1,375 MW and a real impact of 1,445 MW is foreseen.
Translated by LAR
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