14ymedio, Havana, 7 May 2021 — Disgusted and resigned, the residents of the Havana districts of El Canal (in the Cerro municipality) and La Víbora (in Diez de Octubre) are preparing to experience more cuts in the drinking water service.
The measure, according to a statement published this Thursday by the state monopoly Aguas de La Habana (Havana Waters), establishes that the service will begin to be provided every three days rather than on alternate days as has happened until now.
“In order to guarantee the supply of piped water to the users associated with these distributions, it is necessary to undertake a group of adjustments in the schedules and distribution cycles, which will allow a better distribution of the water that we have,” says the note.
The reason for the new supply design is due “to the intense drought that the country is going through,” says the state-owned company, which details that “the groundwater levels of the main supply 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 distributions of the central system.”
In the case of El Canal, the new distribution design will begin this Saturday, and on Sunday in La Víbora.
The state company apologized to the affected users and stated that once “the water levels in the main supply sources have recovered, the distribution cycles will be reestablished in their normal hours.”
Residents in the El Canal neighborhood did not take the news well, as it is an area of the city with a high volume of overcrowding, tenements, and houses in a very precarious state, inhabited by many low-income families. In Cuba, according to official data, “47% of the population receives water daily or every other day.”
The service was subsidized, and according to a report published in Cubadebate, with 80% of the expenses of the State going to electricity.
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 7 pesos per cubic meter (roughly 265 gallons).
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