HAVANA (Reuters) – Cubans are scrambling to turn off lights and appliances and children are going door to door reminding them to do just that under a government threat of dreaded blackouts if energy consumption is not reduced through the end of the year.
The drive to reduce energy use appears aimed at saving foreign exchange, and not related to the lack of oil and generating capacity that caused up to 18-hour blackouts in the 1990s after the demise of Cuba’s patron the Soviet Union. In easternmost Guantanamo province, neighborhoods, on a rotating basis, are abstaining for an hour in the evenings when consumption peaks.
“It is very important to save energy house by house. People know it is the only alternative to blackouts,” Guantanamo retiree Pedro Fernandez said in a telephone interview.
In various provinces grammar school children, organized into “click brigades,” were reported going door to door to remind residents to save power.
Cuba has been grappling with the global economic downturn, which has slashed revenues from key exports, dried up credit and reduced foreign investment.
The communist-run Carib-bean nation also faces stiff US sanctions that include cutting access to international lending institutions, and it is still rebuilding from last year’s trio of hurricanes that caused an estimated $10 billion in damages.
The Cuban government controls all power generation and distribution and sells electricity at subsidized prices.
“We are taking exceptional measures, such as shutting off air conditioning and refrigeration in all state entities that do not stockpile medicines and food,” the deputy governor of central Villa Clara province, Jesus Martuste, told the official Radio Rebelde.
“We have not shut down production, only adjusted some in the name of efficiency,” he said.
End-of-year university breaks have been extended a week, street lighting significantly reduced in the capital and provinces, non-essential air conditioning and refrigeration turned off, and some production and services “adjusted” away from times of high demand, according to media reports and a telephone survey of six provinces.
“The choice is simple. Save or suffer blackouts, and that is a situation nobody wants to live through again,” Gloria Hernandez, an office worker in central Camaguey province, said in a telephone interview.
A Council of Ministers circular, dated October 21 and which reduced government power allocations, termed the energy situation “critical” and called for “extreme measures” through December.
“The energy situation we face is critical and if we do not adopt extreme measures we will have to revert to planned blackouts affecting the population,” said the order, which was seen by Reuters.
All provincial governments and most state-run offices and factories, which encompass 90 per cent of Cuba’s economic activity, were already ordered in June to reduce energy use by a minimum of 12 percent or face mandatory electricity cuts.
The situation is not as dire as in the 1990s because Cuba receives 93,000 of the 150,000 barrels of oil per day that it consumes from strategic ally Venezuela on preferential terms.
