Ecobreves – CUBA: Drought Alert

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

HAVANA, Mar 20 2004 (IPS) - More than 300,000 people suffer water shortages daily in Holguín, one of the six provinces in eastern Cuba hard hit by drought since the 1990s. The city of Holguín, a provincial capital of 340,000, has been in a state of “intense drought alert” since Jul. 29, 2003.

“It simply does not rain and there is no water. The city's distribution system operates irregularly,” says resident Noelia Perdomo.

“The digging of hundreds of wells and the mobilization of tank trucks has brought a certain amount of relief,” according to journalist Ardenis Pablo Rodríguez.

Sources from the climate center at the Cuban Institute of Meteorology say that the November 2003-January 2004 period was one of the driest of the past 50 years