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Residents of Pinar del Río and Santiago de Cuba report up to four months with no piped water
Residents of San Juan y Martínez, in Pinar del Río, and of central Songo-La Maya, in Santiago de Cuba, told Martí Noticias they have gone three to four months with no water service from the mains. The National Institute of Hydraulic Resources acknowledges disruptions affecting 2.5 million people nationwide.
In the La Estrella area of the Pinar del Río municipality of San Juan y Martínez, resident Michel Valladares said families have gone more than four months without supply in their homes and boil rainwater to drink and cook, because they cannot afford private water trucks, which cost between 15,000 and 20,000 Cuban pesos, or 200-liter tanks, which sell for between 1,000 and 1,200 pesos. The report is by journalist Ivette Pacheco, for Martí Noticias, and was picked up by CiberCuba.
In the east of the country, activist and independent journalist Yadira Serrano said that in central Songo-La Maya, in Santiago de Cuba, the shortage has stretched to three and four months, with communities where the problems reach a year without regular service. There, residents turn to hand-dug wells or pay independent sellers between 1,000 and 1,500 pesos per tank, while a water truck can reach 15,000 pesos. In Media Luna, in Granma province, activist Yurisnel Domenech reported five to six days without water in areas that previously had service.
In Havana, reports collected on the Facebook page “Víctimas de Aguas de La Habana” point to 38 days without mains service in the Las Piedras neighborhood of San Francisco de Paula, and a 19-day cutoff in Loma de Córdoba, in Lawton, after an earlier stretch of nearly 80 days without water.
Official figures confirm the scale of the problem. According to reports by the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources (INRH) and the Water and Sanitation Business Group, around 2.5 million people, 32% of the customers connected to the public networks, have disruptions in their drinking water service. The agency itself specifies that more than 85% of pumping stations depend on the National Electric System, that power cuts and equipment breakdowns account for 88% of the causes of the halt in supply and drought for 4%, and that the water systems need 10 to 12 continuous hours of power to pressurize the network.
CiberCuba adds that the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated in September 2026 that those affected could reach 3.5 million, and it recalls documented precedents: in mid-October, seven broken pumping units and blackouts of more than 16 hours a day left communities in Pinar del Río with between 67 days and more than three months without supply, and in September local authorities in Songo-La Maya acknowledged that the municipality’s pumping equipment had been out of service since the start of the year.
Sources: Martí Noticias · CiberCuba · Serie Yamacoa: Afectación eléctrica máxima prevista en el horario pico (Unión Eléctrica (UNE))
Data updated: 2026-10-23T04:15:00.000Z