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The Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz led a working session on Thursday at the Provincial Cargo Office of Havana to assess the critical electricity situation in the capital and explore alternatives to mitigate the impacts on the population.
The central measure announced was the most thorough review of the rotation of blocks and circuits in Havana, prioritizing those with the most accumulated hours of outages, with the aim of distributing power cuts more equitably among the different neighborhoods of the capital.
The Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, attributed the deterioration of the service to the combined effect of fuel shortages and the unexpected outage of several generation units, and assured that efforts are being made to restore the National Electric System in the eastern provinces as quickly as possible.
It was also announced that there will be an increase in rapid response teams to address breakdowns, especially for transformers.
The immediate trigger for the meeting was the ninth breakdown of the thermal power plant Antonio Guiteras in 2026: the plant went offline on Thursday at 04:58 hours due to a leak in the boiler, causing a partial system collapse from Ciego de Ávila to Guantánamo.
The meeting took place amid mass protests in at least 12 municipalities of Havana —Guanabacoa, Marianao, Playa, San Miguel del Padrón, Luyanó, Santos Suárez, and East Havana, among others— where residents took to the streets with barricades, bonfires, and pots and pans due to blackouts lasting up to 22 hours a day.
Roberto Morales Ojeda, Secretary of Organization of the Communist Party, acknowledged in the session that "there are still reservations regarding organizational and subjective matters" in the areas of electricity, water supply, food production, and communication with the public.
Marrero Cruz concluded the meeting with a call to work in neighborhoods and communities and to strengthen the integration of all organizations. “These are not times for the office, but for being in the streets alongside the people, where the problems are,” he stated.
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