Cuba’s Power Grid Collapses Leaving It Without Electricity For The 3rd Time This Month
HAVANA (AP) — Cuba’s power grid Crashed on Saturday before leaving the country electricity for the third time In March, the communist government is struggling with a decaying infrastructure and a US-imposed oil blockade.
The state-owned Cuban Electricity Association reported a complete power outage across the island, without giving any reason for the outage.
Officials said they were working to restore power.
Nationwide or regional power outages have become relatively common over the past two years due to failures in aging infrastructure. Failures are exacerbated by daily outages of up to 12 hours due to fuel shortages, destabilizing the system.
The latest nationwide power outage occurred on Monday. Saturday’s outage was the second outage of last week and the third of March.
Power outages have a significant impact on the population, whose lives are disrupted by reduced working hours, lack of electricity for cooking, and food spoilage when refrigerators stop working, among many other consequences.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel said the island has not received oil from foreign suppliers for three months. Cuba produces only 40% of the fuel it needs to fuel its economy.
Cuba’s aging grid has been greatly eroded in recent years. But the government also blamed the U.S.-imposed energy blockade for the outages. President Donald Trump warned in January Customs duties imposed on any country that sells or supplies oil to Cuba. The Trump administration demands that Cuba release political prisoners and move toward political and economic liberalization in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. Trump also raised the possibility of a “friendly takeover of Cuba.”
