Residents of Old Havana gathered Monday night at the intersection of Egido and Acosta streets to protest the water scarcity that has been affecting them for more than ten days, as the government had not offered them any solutions.
The protest took place from 9 p.m. on Monday night and the neighbors blocked the circulation on that street in Havana with stones and buckets of water, according to a video shared by the independent media Cubanet.
Even though the demonstration proceeded peacefully, the police closely monitored this event.
Finally, witnesses told Cubanet that after the government sent a water truck, the protesters returned to their homes.
However, the crisis situation with water supply in that area is not a new problem; rather, it is a situation that the inhabitants of that part of the city face every year.
Last year, the residents of Egido Street closed the road to protest the lack of water. Once again, the government silenced them with a water truck to calm tensions and allow problems to continue as they are.
The tense situation regarding water supply and the poor conditions of the hydraulic infrastructure in the country have also led inhabitants from other provinces to protest in defense of this basic right that the regime is not able to fulfill for its citizens.
Approximately 15 days ago, in the ECOA 13 neighborhood of Santa Clara, on the road to Camajuaní, residents of that district protested after more than two months without drinking water.
The protesters closed the avenue in protest against the authorities' negligence and demanded the restoration of the service, shouting "we want water".
Likewise, on social media, residents of the city of Santiago de Cuba showed the quality of the water they receive: quite dirty, resembling chocolate.
The water supply crisis in this province is putting its inhabitants in check, who are sometimes forced to resort to extreme solutions.
But this situation deserves a deeper analysis, as the country has received aid from other nations to improve its hydraulic infrastructure. However, faced with this situation, many questions come to mind.
For example, links between the island and the Kuwaiti Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED) allowed Cuba to receive a grant of 102.3 million dollars to improve its hydraulic infrastructure.
According to the state-run news agency ACN, the referenced funds date back more than two decades (from 2003) and – in that period of time – the cooperation granted five credits for the execution of rehabilitation works on water supply, sewerage, storm drainage networks, among others.
Of the amount delivered to the state-owned National Institute of Hydraulic Resources (INRH), up to date, 84.7 percent has been executed, which "benefited" one million 454 thousand inhabitants of the provinces of Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, and Havana.
However, recently published data confirm that thousands of people do not have access to water supply services daily, largely due to power outages, but also due to causes such as drought, lack of distribution network, leaks, corruption, among others.
Data recorded last year indicates that around two million people receive the service every three days or more, and there are 478 population settlements that lack aqueduct networks either completely or partially. All of this directly affects quality of life and health, as it forces people to rely on alternative systems to obtain the precious liquid.
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