14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 9 June 2021 — After more than a week without water, the residents of a multi-family building located on 19 de Mayo and Ayestarán in the capital’s municipality of Plaza de la Revolución, were able to receive water through a watertruck, thanks to a complaint on social networks where they named the state company Aguas de La Habana.
Internet user Otane González made the complaint by sharing a company poster with the phrase “Water is like love, we cannot live without it.” With irony, the woman responded to the state company: “Very true Aguas de La Habana, without love you cannot live and without water, even less. Pay attention to what you say.”
In Gonzalez’s post also we read: “We have been a week without water and love wanes,” adding that despite the efforts made by the residents of the building they were unsuccessful. Those in charge of repairing the problem “trade in justifications and an important point is forgotten: this street is inhabited by living beings,” she said.
A neighbor who lives near the building told 14ymedio that after the complaint, a government leader saw the publication on the networks and they sent a watertruck. “Apparently there is a break [in the pipes] that they have not found, that is why the supply does not reach the residents of the building, but in the rest of the area there is water every day, from 5 am to 3 pm,” he said.
“It’s now better to write on Facebook than to call any institution to solve a problem,” explains a resident of the property speaking to this newspaper by phone. “When we were calling Aguas de La Habana and complaining to the area’s delegate, we only got the runaround.” However, “it was enough for her to go online for them to start running.”
The man adds that the lack of supply put them “on the brink of a hygienic crisis.” The high temperatures, the high incidence of the pandemic in the capital and the shortage of personal and domestic hygiene products “came together in a perfect storm,” he details. “Luckily I could go to my daughter’s house to bathe, but here there are people who have been barely cleaning their mouths all these days and that’s it.”
At the beginning of last month, the residents of the Havana districts of El Canal (Cerro) and La Víbora (Diez de Octubre) experienced cuts in the drinking water service when the capital authorities established that the supply would be provided every three days and not on alternate days as had happened up to that time.
The reason for the new supply pattern was due “to the intense drought that the country is experiencing,” said the state company, which adds that “the water tables of the main sources that supply the city are very depressed.” For this reason, there are “effects due to lack of water and low pressure in some areas and neighborhoods of the central system.”
A few days later, there was an electrical breakdown that damaged the Cuenca Sur source, affecting the municipalities that receive that water: Plaza de la Revolución, Centro Habana, Cerro, Diez de Octubre and La Habana Vieja, in addition to the Miraflores and Altahabana neighborhoods, in Boyeros.
The supply of drinking water is one of the services that, with the elimination of subsidies on January 1, increased considerably in price. In this case, from 1.75 pesos to seven pesos per cubic meter.
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