Cuba gradually restored electricity after a major blackout, with outages persisting due to an ageing grid and a US oil blockade.

HAVANA: Cuba was gradually restoring power after a nationwide blackout, the latest in a series of frequent outages.

The government said that by Tuesday morning, two-thirds of the country had electricity again, though it did not specify the cause of the latest failure.

In the capital Havana, home to 1.7 million people, some neighbourhoods had power restored. The island’s ageing electricity generation system is in shambles, with daily outages of up to 20 hours being the norm in some areas.

The system lacks the fuel needed to generate consistent power. Since the US ouster of Cuba’s top ally, Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, on January 3, the island’s economy has been hammered further.

President Donald Trump maintains a de facto oil blockade, with no oil imported to the island since January 9. This has crippled the power sector and forced airlines to curtail flights, dealing a blow to the vital tourism industry.

The crisis in the country of 9.6 million people comes as Trump says he wants a change of leadership in Havana. Residents expressed frustration over the persistent blackouts.

“What we fear all the time is that the blackout will drag on and we will lose the little bit that we have in the fridge, because everything is so expensive,” said Olga Suarez, a 64-year-old retiree.

“Otherwise we are used to it because here almost all the time you go to bed and wake up without electricity,” she told AFP.

 The Sun Malaysia