Havana is facing for the umpteenth time restrictions due to fuel shortages. According to pick up the digital OnCuba from Granma –that this Monday it experiences “technical failures” again and cannot be accessed apart from its contents– The provincial government will establish new measures to face “a situation created by the lack of diesel supply to private carriers or owners of resources in this sector.”
Thus, the official press assures, “the fuel figures assigned to vital activities will be readjusted”, that is, a limit will be imposed to buy, and the sale of diesel will be offered in four service centers “located to the east, west, center and south from the city”.
The authorities do not offer the names of these Cupets, but report that they will be authorized “at dawn to provide services to the population in the morning.”
There will also be limits of liters according to the type of vehicle, although for the moment they have not specified the quotas assigned to each of them.
“Both are lost,” laments a carrier with ’14ymedio’. “I am paying 50 and 60 pesos per liter for oil on the street because I am not in line”
The lack of fuel is evident in the capital because there is a lack of transportation and garbage collection. This Monday, in addition, the streets look more empty of cars than ever, and even in avenues as central as 23, long minutes can go by without one passing by.
Several Cupets, such as G and 25 and L and 17, where huge lines of vehicles usually form, were without service because there was neither diesel nor gasoline for sale. “Both are lost,” laments a transporter with 14ymedio. “I am paying 50 and 60 pesos per liter for oil on the street because I am not here to queue.” The price in official establishments is around 30 pesos per liter.
In other provinces they have been suffering cuts for weeks. In Villa Clara, for example, they rationed gasoline at the beginning of last Marchto a maximum of 30 liters per car, 20 liters for cargo or passenger tricycles and 10 liters for motorcycles.
In the middle of that month, just after a visit of Raúl Castro to Caracasit was learned by Reuters that Venezuela I was preparing the shipment to Cuba of more than a million and a half barrels of fuel in a supertanker with the Panamanian flag. The cargo was composed, the British agency published at the time, by 400,000 barrels of fuel oil and 1.13 million barrels of Venezuelan heavy oil.
According to that same information, the ship would arrive on the island at the end of March, but there is no trace of that cargo on the streets.
Meanwhile, a union especially indignant with the shortage of oil are the taxi drivers. Sources from this newspaper assure that they are fighting for special service centers to be enabled so they do not have to stand in the same queues as the rest, including private ones. “Until now we are having to join several taxi drivers to take turns in the queues, but we cannot continue like this,” says one of them.
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