“Many people do not have how to cook even a boiled meal, much less a meal,” laments a resident of Camajuaní.
SANTA CLARA, Cuba. – Several rural towns, almost all belonging to the municipality of Camajuaní, in Villa Clara, suffer blackouts of more than 24 hours. The areas of Vega Alta, La Luz, La Quinta and Carmita have had prolonged outages for months.
Several residents of these towns contacted the Facebook profile Child reporting a crime to denounce the situation, which worsened after the Electric Company made changes to the structure of the blocks to which these communities belong. Residents in these areas described “a true state of energy terror, aggravated by non-transparent decisions and a total lack of institutional response.” Several months ago, the Electric Company modified the line of its original block and joined it to circuits 129 and 72 of the municipal capital to “protect entities with higher consumption,” according to the publication of Child reporting a crime.
“How long will the abuse last, how far will they go with the shamelessness, how far do we have to continue enduring years of punishment?” posted a resident of Vega Alta in the public group of this town. “There are already countless hours of blackouts that we suffer daily and we are tired of hearing unfulfilled promises. The little food that people have is rotting and no one cares,” he also lamented.
This same week, the residents of those rural areas suffered two full days of blackouts and, on the 7th, after 27 hours without electricity, they only had service for 30 minutes, according to the residents of Vega Alta themselves report on Facebook. “There has not been a single night with power in months, the televisions and refrigerators are for decoration. Here we cook with firewood and there is no time to charge lamps or cell phones. Of course there is no internet and coverage is only available in some high areas,” explained Carmen, a resident of Batey Viejo, near Carmita.
The approximate consumption of these towns with few inhabitants does not even exceed 1.5 MW and their population, mostly peasant and elderly, does not have the financial resources to acquire alternative sources of energy. There is also no allocation of liquefied gas in these towns, so their residents depend exclusively on electricity or the sporadic sale of kerosene through the supply book that has not reached the warehouses for more than a year.
“Many people do not have a way to cook or boil a meal, much less a meal. They have not provided water, they do not look for alternatives to pump. It is the worst thing ever,” denounced Caridad Cid, a resident of Camajuaní, where the outages also exceed 30 hours.
Neighbors from other areas of the northern circuit of Villa Clara such as Taguayabón, Macagual, Vueltas, José María Pérez (former Central El Fe), Remedies and Caibarien report a similar situation. “We had a blackout for 55 hours,” Emelina Bonachea, a Remedian resident, commented at the bottom of one of the aforementioned Facebook posts. “They put it on from 8:00 or so and at 2:45 am they took it off again, and they haven’t put it on again. “He is abusive to the people.”
