Development & Aid, Environment, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

CUBA: Foreign Investment Upgrades Water Pipes, Boosts Supplies

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Feb 26 2003 (IPS) - Access to reliable water supplies has improved significantly in the Cuban capital over the past three years, thanks to investment from Spain that has helped this Caribbean island nation overcome severe shortfalls.

Although more than 94 percent of Cuba’s 11.2 million people now have access to potable water, only 73 percent are connected to the central water pipe system, according to official statistics.

Up to 2000, Havana, a city of 2.2 million, was plagued by serious water supply problems. Some districts totally lacked piped water, while delivery was unreliable in others, due to an antiquated, dilapidated system of water pipes.

”In my neighbourhood it was terrible,” Mercedes Morales, 35, who works out of her home in the western Havana district of La Lisa, told IPS. ”You had to store enough water to last for several days, because you’d never know when the water would be running again.”

For Morales and her neighbours, the days of worrying about water are over. La Lisa was the first of eight Havana districts to benefit from an ambitious project by the Cuban-Spanish company Aguas de La Habana that has upgraded and repaired the water system, starting in 2000.

Cuba’s socialist government says foreign investment is only a ”complementary” element in the development of the country. But it is clear to many Cubans that several public utilities have improved since they entered into partnerships with companies from other countries.

Associations with foreign firms have led to an increase in the number of families who use cooking gas instead of kerosene in the capital and in Santiago de Cuba, 900 kms east of Havana, as well as the number of household telephone lines.

Foreign investment in Cuba does not involve the transfer of property ownership. The infrastructure of Aguas de La Habana remains public, and the company was authorised to use it, with the aim of improving water supplies.

The firm runs the piped water, drainage and sewer services in an area of Havana that encompasses the districts of La Lisa, Playa, Marianao, Habana Vieja, Centro Habana, Cerro, 10 de Octubre and Plaza.

The governmental Cuban Institute of Water Resources, which is responsible for the country’s water and sewage services, also set up other companies to serve the rest of the capital. But the idea is for Aguas de La Habana to eventually serve the entire city.

Experts say the main problem in the capital was not a shortage of water, but the appalling state of the water pipes, which led to the leakage and loss of fully half of all piped water in the city.

Many families had to wait for the visit of a water truck, which are known locally as ”pipas”.

”My cousin had to stand and wait in long lines, but she doesn’t have to anymore, because they put brand-new pipes in her house,” said Morales.

The infrastructure works carried out by the joint venture included the installation of around 400 kms of water pipes of various sizes, and the restoration of the Albear Aqueduct, which dates back to the mid-19th century.

The aged 9.6-km-long canal provides 10 to 12 percent of the water consumed in the capital, and its renovation cut the visits of water trucks to Old Havana, the oldest part of the city, by 40 percent.

”Supplies have improved so much,” said María Josefina Recio, a tour operator who lives in the old city. ”Water used to just trickle out of my faucets, and only occasionally, but now it runs almost all day long, and we have enough.”

In 2000, more than 90,000 people in Havana depended on the ”pipas” for water – a number that had shrunk to just over 24,000 by late 2002, according to government sources.

The use of water trucks entailed extra expenses, on fuel, which were slashed from 480,000 dollars a year in 2000 to 177,000 dollars in 2002.

In 1997, after more than three decades of cost-free water supplies, households began to pay one peso per person per month, a rate that remains unchanged for most six years later.

The average salary in Cuba currently amounts to 262 pesos a month. The dollar is equivalent to the peso at the official exchange rate, although it trades at a rate of 26 to the peso in the government exchange bureaux.

The gradual installation of water meters should lower the cost for households that consume less than 3,000 litres of water a month per person, while homes with higher levels of consumption would pay higher rates.

Cuban officials plan to use a loan from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to clean up the Almendares- Vento river, which supplies more than 40 percent of Havana’s water, this year.

The clean-up will also benefit 260,000 people who live in neighbourhoods along the river, which runs through the capital.

A government investment project to expand water distribution in the rest of the country has so far built 3,220 rural aqueducts, which serve more than 1.8 million people.

According to the United Nations, more than 1.2 billion people worldwide have no access to potable water and 2.4 billion lack sewage services.

International experts say the privatisation of water companies poses a number of risks, including reduced access to clean water for the poorest segments of society, due to a rise in utility rates.