Residents of the Monterrey neighborhood in the capital municipality of San Miguel del Padrón report that they have been experiencing nightly blackouts, water supply issues, and deficiencies in telephone coverage for nearly a year, with no solutions from the authorities.
In a post shared on Thursday on Facebook on behalf of the community, the user Yoel Sánchez Pérez explained that residents of that area have repeatedly approached the Electric Union (UNE), the Telecommunications Company of Cuba (Etecsa), the Municipal Services Company, and the municipal government offices, but they have not received effective responses.
"The UNE, Etecsa, Comunales, all institutions respond to complaints with demagoguery and evasion. The justifications are illogical, and it is clear to see the indifference and lack of solutions," the text emphasized.
One of the most serious problems occurs during the early mornings when, according to the neighbors, electricity never arrives, and families have to resort to coal to cook their meals.
"We have to get up to light the charcoal because there isn't a single morning when we have power," they reported.
Residents acknowledge that the country is experiencing a widespread crisis, but they believe that Monterrey is at a disadvantage even compared to other neighborhoods that also suffer from deficiencies in basic services.
"We want everyone to have electricity, connectivity, water, but if that’s not possible, we deserve for this distribution to be equal for everyone," they demanded.
The MR450 circuit, which supplies Monterrey along with Luyanó Moderno and La Corea, experienced a new outage on Saturday starting at 5:57 PM due to a generation deficit.
The lack of electricity directly affects the water supply. The distribution relies on the Benigno and El Gato sources, whose pumping is halted when the electric service is interrupted. The Benigno source supplies about 58,000 residents of the municipality.
Neighbors assert that their complaints have gone unresolved for nearly a year and demanded that the authorities stop offering explanations and address the issues affecting the community.
In San Francisco de Paula, also in San Miguel del Padrón, residents have been receiving barely one hour of electricity a day for over a month, and streets where there has been no water service for about six months, according to a recent complaint.
In July, residents of the Mirador del Diezmero, in the same municipality, reported more than 10 days without water or electricity and clashes among neighbors to secure a bucket of water.
More than 309,000 residents of Havana were experiencing water supply issues on Thursday, although this number had decreased from over 500,000 affected earlier in the month, according to data from Aguas de La Habana.
The deficiencies in service are compounded by the controversy over the distribution of electricity among circuits, a system implemented in July to replace block outages.
The mechanism has heightened suspicions of favoritism and corruption in the electric companies, in a context where the Secretary of Organization of the Communist Party, Roberto Morales Ojeda, and attributed them to "four or five" workers.
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