The crisis in water supply in the city of Santiago de Cuba is pushing people to extreme solutions, such as collecting the precious liquid directly from a street leak, compromising its quality and safety, putting lives at risk.
The neighbors of the Los Pinos neighborhood, who have been without water service through the pipeline for more than two weeks, are filling buckets and tanks directly from a huge leak on the road, denounced communicator Yosmany Mayeta on Facebook this Wednesday.
According to the activist, the huge hole in the street is the result of a repair of a break that started some time ago, but has not yet been completed, leaving people without this vital service for at least two weeks.
The pothole is located at the corner of Mariana Grajales and Los Pinos streets, in the city of Santiago de Cuba, very close to a garbage dump as can be seen in the video.
In the photos shared by Mayeta, you can see how children and elderly people are carrying the vital liquid in any container they can use for that purpose.
Up to there, people arrive with carts, tanks, and whatever containers they have in their homes,” the communicator pointed out, also denouncing that they have created a recreational space in the makeshift pool.
At the same time, in the same hole where children bathe and people fetch water for their houses, "the coachmen who pass through this street make their animals drink there," illustrating the magnitude of the problem that could result in a source of contamination and diarrheal diseases.
Mayeta explained that the neighbors, tired and annoyed by seeing how the water that they so desperately need in their homes is being wasted due to the negligence of the government, asked her to make the government's inadequate management in solving this problem public.
CiberCuba contacted some neighbors in the area who argued that they have been without drinking water service for almost 20 days.
A person from the Jiménez neighborhood, very close to the breakage, reported that they have been without the precious water for 19 days already.
On the other hand, a mother from the urban center José Martí warned that she has not seen water running through the pipes for more than two weeks.
However, despite the unfavourable situation experienced by the people of Santiago due to power outages and the precarious water supply system, last March the first secretary of the Party in Santiago de Cuba, Beatriz Johnson Urrutia, asked the people not to despair.
The leader was captured in a working meeting when she asked to inform people about how within a week everyone will have "their little bit of water."
However, people who receive water through the pipelines also report the terrible condition of the liquid, which can barely be used for household chores.
A Cuban resident in the city of Santiago de Cuba reported the poor quality of the water that is reaching the homes in the area where she lives.
"Look at the water that is reaching the district," denounced Keisa Calderín in a Facebook group, who needed only two photos to demonstrate the seriousness of the matter.
However, the problems associated with water supply are not only reported in Santiago de Cuba. Recently, the increase in cases of hepatitis A in the Reina neighborhood, in the city of Cienfuegos, raised alarms and forced authorities to implement epidemiological surveillance measures due to the health alert.
Dr. Liván Rojas Lantigua, Director of Health Management at the General Health Directorate in Cienfuegos, announced in a press conference that "the majority of cases are concentrated in four blocks of that neighborhood, where they are carrying out disease focus control, which has an incubation period ranging between 15 and 50 days," as reported on the website of the local channel Perlavisión.