News · Society
Díaz-Canel says "no embargo can justify" negligence, on a program about the water crisis
On the November 4 edition of his program Criterio Compartido, devoted to water supply, Díaz-Canel said the embargo does not justify officials' negligence. The government put the number of people with interrupted supply at around 2,681,770; the UN estimated in September that it could reach 3.5 million.
"Where there is negligence, where there is indolence, where an official fails to attend to the population, no embargo can justify it, no blockade justification holds," Miguel Díaz-Canel said on November 4 on Criterio Compartido, the Radio Rebelde program he has co-hosted with journalist Bárbara Betancourt since September 23. The edition was devoted to the water supply crisis, according to CiberCuba.
According to the president of the National Institute of Water Resources, Antonio Rodríguez Rodríguez, at dawn on November 3 around 2,681,770 people had their piped supply interrupted: 66% of the disruptions were caused by electrical failures, because pumping stations do not work without power, and 25% by broken pumping equipment. 14ymedio put the figure this week at some 2.68 million people affected, around 536,000 of them in Havana, using the same institute data.
Residents of Santiago de Cuba and Havana said on the program that they had gone up to two years without piped water, a situation Díaz-Canel called "real, serious and complex." He cited the embargo, the energy crisis and ageing networks as aggravating factors, and added that "solving a complaint should not depend on the person appearing on the program."
Water depends on electricity, and electricity falls short: on Saturday the state power utility forecast 1,070 MW of available generation against demand of 2,830 MW, that is 38% of the country's needs, and some Havana circuits went more than 52 consecutive hours without power in early November.
Sources: CiberCuba · 14ymedio
Data updated: 2026-11-08T04:15:00.000Z