When access is not enough The challenge of the quality

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Laura gets up early every morning, bathes, changes, and sits down to have breakfast while reading the newspaper before going to work. Let's stop the clock for a minute. Let's imagine that today's morning routine was the same, but at the same time completely different. When Laura was taking a shower, she had to do it with cold water, because the heater was not working because a blackout affected a quarter of the city. Later, when she wanted to make coffee, she couldn't do it because a water outage left the entire neighborhood without service.

And finally, when she was at the stop waiting for the bus to go to work, she had to wait a long time because the buses passed by completely full and did not stop at her stop. Without a doubt, the quality of electricity, water and sanitation, and transportation services plays a fundamental role in Laura's daily life and in C Level Executive List that of all of us. The quality of infrastructure services, that is, water, electricity and transportation, has a direct impact on our quality of life. Having access does not ensure that we can take full advantage of the benefits that these services provide. Many homes in the region suffer from unplanned blackouts and water cuts, as well as scarce, irregular and unpunctual public transportation.



These deficiencies negatively impact people, who waste time waiting for services to return or looking for other alternatives, in addition to affecting other essential services such as those provided by schools and hospitals. What is the quality of infrastructure services in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) then? Frequent and prolonged power outages directly affect our well-being . For example, they prevent us from keeping food in the refrigerator, studying for an exam, cooking, or bathing with hot water. These difficulties are not foreign to the region. In 2018, LAC countries suffered an average of 16 blackouts, lasting 33 minutes each. These values ​​are well above advanced economies and represent a challenge for the region.