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Po­lit­i­cal leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice, David Ab­du­lah, has crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to the wors­en­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in Cu­ba, warn­ing that fu­el short­ages there have cre­at­ed con­di­tions that would bring this coun­try to a stand­still with­in weeks.

Speak­ing dur­ing the par­ty’s Tues­day Talk web se­ries yes­ter­day, Ab­du­lah de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion in Cu­ba as se­ri­ous and dif­fi­cult, blam­ing what he termed “col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment” aris­ing from the Unit­ed States block­ade, par­tic­u­lar­ly over the last three months, as re­stric­tions on fu­el sup­plies in­ten­si­fied.

Putting the cri­sis in­to a lo­cal con­text, he urged all to con­sid­er the im­pli­ca­tions of a sim­i­lar dis­rup­tion at home, not­ing that with the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery moth­balled, the coun­try de­pends heav­i­ly on im­port­ed fu­el to sus­tain trans­porta­tion, com­merce and es­sen­tial ser­vices.