The Greens’ socialist, carbon-free dream reaches fruition
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Communist Cuba shuts down schools, state-owned workplaces as huge blackout leaves millions in dark
A massive outage left millions of Cubans without power and prompted the government Friday to implement emergency measures to slash demand, including suspending classes, shutting down some state-owned workplaces and canceling non-essential services.
Cuban officials said that the blackout, which started late Thursday, saw 1.64 gigawatts go offline during peak hours in the early evening, about half the total demand at the time.
“The situation has worsened in recent days,” Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said in a special address on national television in the early hours of Friday.
“We must be fully transparent … we have been halting economic activities to ensure energy for the population.”
During his address, Marrero was accompanied by Alfredo López, chief of the state-owned utility, UNE, who said the outage stemmed from increased demand from small- and medium-sized companies and residences’ air conditioners, as well as breakdowns in old thermoelectric plants that haven’t been properly maintained and the lack of fuel to operate some facilities.
Communist Cuba is in total darkness today thanks to a power outage due to a lack of oil and a dilapidated energy infrastructure which has forced the government to shut down almost everything. The Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric power plant in the city of Matanzas suddenly and inexplicably shut down. Repair crews are desperately trying to get the plant working again with no timetable as to when power might be restored.
Schools, industry, and "cultural and nonessential activities" such as bars and discos are shuttered at least until Monday. The outage follows a late-night TV address by Cuban Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz on Thursday night.
“We have had to paralyze the economy to guarantee a minimum of electrical service,” Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said in an announcement.
Early Saturday morning, after power was slowly being restored, another catastrophic failure occurred and the island was once again plunged into darkness.
Venezuela has been supplying Cuba with about 80% of its oil in recent years. But now, the Venezuela oil industry is also suffering from neglect and poor maintenance and those deliveries to Cuba have been cut in half. Cuba has tried to buy from Mexico and Russia, but they can't pay in Cuban worthless pesos and its hard currency reserves are needed to buy food.
Totally unrelated, right?:
Cuba slashes size of daily bread ration as ingredients run thin
By Reuters
September 17, 20242:44
HAVANA, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Cuba's communist-run government on Monday slashed by a quarter the weight of its subsidized ration of daily bread, the latest shortage to strain a decades-old subsidies scheme created by the late Fidel Castro.
The bread, one of a handful of still subsidized basic food products in Cuba, will be reduced from 80 grams to 60 grams (2.1 oz), or approximately the weight of an average cookie or a small bar of soap. Its price, too, was slightly reduced, to just under 1 peso, or 1/3 of a cent.
Still, many Cubans, who earn around 4648 pesos a month, or around $15, can scarcely afford to shop for more expensive bread on the private market, leaving them with few alternatives.
"We have to accept it, what else can we do?" Havana-resident Dolores Fernandez told Reuters while she stood outside a bakery on Monday. "There's no choice."
“Viva Fidel! Viva socialism!
