Cooking with Fidel: As blackouts multiply, Castro pleads for power thrift
Cuban President Fidel Castro shows a pressure
cooker next to Yadira Garcia, Minister of Basic
Industries at the Conventions Palace in Havana, 26 May
2005, in the framework of the Energy Saving plan.
AFP PHOTO/ISMAEL FRANCISCO GONZALEZ ARCEO/AIN
Monday, May 30, 2005
HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): Faced with crippling
power outages and a grumbling public, Cuba's President Fidel Castro has made
an urgent televised appeal for energy thrift, even demonstrating the relative
merits of Chinese-made pressure cookers.
"Exceptional measures are being taken" to cope with the crisis, Castro, 78,
said in an hours-long appearance on state television late Thursday, as the
crunch has begun to yield more blackouts, and longer ones, as Cuba heads into
the hottest summer months. As if to
underscore that he, too, feels the heat, Castro read aloud "opinions"
collected from the public, replete with harsh criticism for the blackouts.
As local jokes have it, they are more reliable than the power supply.
If other countries have reality television shows, this was the Cuban version
of accountability TV. Basic Industry Minister
Yadira Garcia had a somewhat discouraging bottom line: Cuba's power plants are
obsolescent and require complex maintenance, which adds to the number of
blackouts. She said there are no spare parts
readily available for the mostly vintage 1960s and 1970s Soviet- and
Czech-technology plants. "You have to special-order them," which also
contributes to blackout woes, she said. Yet
"May and June are very difficult months, with a lot of tensions," she said,
and power simply will not be able to be kept flowing at all times.
She said blackouts would continue for now, but did not give a date as to when
they might stop. Castro grilled state power
company officials on the program, and they revealed that they need to replace
17,000 kilometers (10,563 miles) of power lines and 44,000 power line poles to
modernize the country's distribution system.
It was the 29th extensive address by Castro since he began dramatically
stepping up his public speaking appearances in March on problems plaguing the
only one-party communist country in the Americas.
Last year, a breakdown at the country's biggest power plant that dragged on
for months cost Cuba more than 200 million dollars, according to government
figures, not to mention regular blackouts. At
the time, Castro acknowledged that Cuba has "a weak national electrical
system" and launched an energy-saving program.
In April, Castro said normal lightbulbs would be phased out and replaced by
fluorescent lighting. He said new energy-saving rice cookers and refrigerators
would begin to be distributed, and many Cubans complain that they have not
received the more efficient appliances, according to "opinions" Castro read
that were gathered by party officials. In his
television appearance, Castro sized up pots and pans, hot plates and fans.
"This is the glorious little socialist (pressure) cooker," Castro said, eyeing
a locally made model which he said was not up to snuff for energy savings. He
gave a middling rating to a Colombian-made cooker and raved about the
purported electrical efficiency of a Chinese model: "This is the Olympic
champion of pressure cookers," he said, adding that Cuba had acquired two
million of the Chinese-made cookers to distribute across Cuba at a heavily
subsidized price. The gravity of the 2004
crisis also led to the firing of then-Basic Industry chief, Marcos Portal --
who is married to Castro's niece and is a member of the Communist Party's
politburo -- and his replacement by Garcia.
Nine oil- or gas-fired power plants produce more than 90 percent of the
electricity used by Cuba's 11 million people.
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