In a context of serious energy crisis, Cuba today gradually restored electricity supply after a widespread blackout, due to the collapse of the electrical grid, which left around 10 million people without electricity.
This was the sixth blackout in just over a year in the country, where the energy situation has worsened significantly after the US Government banned the sale of Venezuelan oil to the island and threatened to impose tariffs on countries that deliver oil to the country.
The American president, Donald Trump has already warned several times that he intends to control the island and on Monday he even warned that he will have “the honor” of taking Cuba and doing “what he wants” with the country.
“Whether it’s freeing them” or “taking them,” “I think I can do whatever I want with them,” Trump said at the White House.
At noon today, around 45% of homes in Havana, home to 1.7 million inhabitants, already had electricity again, announced the national electricity company (UNE).
The authorities have not yet provided information about the origin of the general failure that occurred on Monday at noon, only indicating that no damage had been detected in the network.
In Cuba, the electricity grid was reestablished this morning from Pinar del Río, in the far west, to Holguín, in the center-east of the country, that is, more than two thirds of the territory, authorities reported.
The country’s electricity company is now trying to increase electricity production so that current can reach homes.
“What we fear most is that the cut will continue and that we will lose what little we have in the fridge, because everything is expensive,” Olga Suarez, a 64-year-old retiree, in the Vedado neighborhood, in the center of the capital, told the France-Presse news agency this morning.
“As for the rest, we get used to it, because here we go to bed and get up without light” due to the daily power cuts, he added.
The Cuban Government claims that US sanctions prevent it from repairing the electricity grid, although economists point to chronic underinvestment by the State in this sector.
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