Residents of Guiteras Street, between Aguilera and Maceo, in the town of Ceiba Mocha, Matanzas province, have been without electricity or experiencing extremely low voltage for a week due to a malfunction in a transformer that the Electric Company has not addressed, according to a complaint posted this Saturday on Facebook.
The problem began on Saturday, June 6, when several homes were left without electricity after the power service was restored, while others experienced dangerously low voltage levels. The outage affects approximately three blocks of the town.
The neighbors immediately reported the issue to the Customer Service of the Electric Company and received the report number 18351. However, seven days later, the situation remains unchanged.
"At 8:15 AM on June 13, the Customer Service system reported that report 18351 was still awaiting a car visit," denounced Yuni Moliner, the author of the post.
The delay has a logistical explanation that does not justify the inaction: Ceiba Mocha is located about 20 kilometers from the center of the city of Matanzas, and the neighbors themselves point out that in order to carry out any connection or disconnection of the service, it is necessary to transport a vehicle from the Basic Electric Organization from the municipal seat.
The municipality of Matanzas had accumulated over 200 pending outage reports by the close of June 12, highlighting the total saturation of the customer service system. An official from the Electric Company of Matanzas described the province as the most affected in the country, with circuits that have experienced over 40 continuous hours of blackout.
The case of Ceiba Mocha is not isolated. The town of Cantel, in Cárdenas, was left without electricity for over seven days following the explosion of a transformer at the Humberto Álvarez sugar mill. In Mayarí, Holguín, more than 400 families were without power for 29 days, and the solution required transporting a 630 kVA transformer from Havana. This same Saturday, residents of Güines reported being without electricity for over a week after the explosion of another transformer, with three unsuccessful repair attempts.
The lack of preventive maintenance, the shortage of spare parts, and the repeated power outages are structural factors that exacerbate the frequency and duration of these breakdowns. "The lack of maintenance, the limitations in accessing components, and the recurring power cuts cause this type of breakdown to be among the most frequent," Moliner cautioned in his publication.
Everything is happening against the backdrop of the worst energy crisis in Cuba in decades. The country has been under severe fuel limitations for more than 130 days due to an oil blockade, and on June 10, the available generation was just 960 MW compared to a peak demand of 2,595 MW, covering only a third of what is needed.
While the Electric Company accumulates unaddressed reports, the residents of Ceiba Mocha continue to wait for the vehicle that, according to the customer service system, has not arrived for a week.
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