Close to one in four Cubans cannot count on water coming out of the tap. On Wednesday the head of the National Hydraulic Resources Institute, Antonio Rodríguez, told President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s weekly radio show that 2,681,770 people were living with broken or interrupted supply, and the president himself labelled the situation serious and complex.
Power cuts are the main culprit. Rodríguez said about two-thirds of the outages trace back to electricity failures, with a quarter caused by worn-out pumping equipment. Havana is hit hardest, with roughly 536,000 residents affected, followed by provinces such as Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, Matanzas, Artemisa and Pinar del Río. Spanish news agency EFE reported that some neighbourhoods have gone as long as 40 days without piped water, while uncollected rubbish adds to health worries.
Díaz-Canel pointed to familiar causes, the U.S. embargo, the energy crisis that has battered the island since mid-2024 and decades-old pipes, but he also blamed “negligence” and poor coordination inside his own administration. Ordinary people, he said, should never be treated as a nuisance by the institutions meant to serve them.
The plan to fix it leans heavily on the sun. Ten solar farms totalling 200 MW, with battery storage, are meant to power the three main sources that supply the capital, with completion targeted for August 2027. Across the provinces, 1,312 pumps are being switched to solar in a first phase, and 853 of them are already running. Big projects take time, the president admitted, so for now officials are trying to ease the worst shortages day by day.
