After more than two months without drinking water, the residents of the Villa Clara town of Ecoa 13, on the road to Camajuaní in Santa Clara, closed the avenue in protest against the negligence of the authorities and demanded the restoration of service.
The protesters confirmed that they have been without the liquid for more than two months, so they took to the street to close traffic shouting “we want water.”
Women and children placed several empty plastic tanks in the middle of the street to obstruct vehicular traffic.
After the protest, the regime sent three water pipes to calm things down.
Internet user Amelia Leon Pacheco, a resident of that town, stated that the demonstration occurred because the discontent is widespread. “It is unsustainable to have a population without water for so many days. There is no justification… there was a solution immediately and the council delegate knew it because I myself called him to attention; a timely intervention would have prevented that,” she said.
A witness confirmed to the independent media Cuban Diary that “people have been carrying water along the road with those cubes for weeks.”
More than 60% of Cubans live without a stable supply of drinking water and 80% suffer from electricity outages in their homes, according to a survey by the Observatory of Social Rights in Cuba last year.
In that context the protests over water shortage and power outages have become increasingly frequent.
Last year, more than a dozen Cuban women, many of them accompanied by their children, closed the intersection of Monte and Agramonte streets in Old Havana in protest against the prolonged water shortage in that Havana municipality.
The regime blames the crisis in the supply of liquid on the poor condition of the pipes and the lack of maintenance, since the equipment that pumps water, at least in the capital, has not received maintenance or been replaced for more than 20 years.
