Noboa appoints new health minister and announces Inés Manzano will be replaced as energy minister

President Daniel Noboa announced changes to his presidential cabinet Monday, appointing a new health minister and announcing that Minister of Energy and Mines Inés Manzano will be replaced at the end of the month.

Controversial Energy Minister Inés Manzano will leave her position at the end of April.

Guayaquil physician and hospital manager Jaime Bernabé Erazo is the new health minister, replacing Vice President María José Pinto who has held the position on an interim basis since November.

Manzano, who directed the Energy Ministry since October 2024, has been widely criticized for providing “confusing and often incorrect information” to the public about the status of the country’s electric power situation, according to the national College of Electrical Engineers. She oversaw the 2024 electric power crisis that included blackouts of as long as 14 hours. Recently, she has offered conflicting statements about blackouts in Guayaquil, Quito and other cities.

In the announcement that Manzano would leave her position April 30, Noboa said the new energy minister would be a “professional with broad experience in the energy field.” He did not offer names of possible replacements.

The appointment of Erazo as health minister was complicated when several news sources reported that he is a “debtor to public entities,” which would bar him from holding public office. The Ministry of Labor resolved the problem Monday afternoon, saying the “impediment of the debt claim had been withdrawn.”

A Labor Ministry spokesman said the debt was “related to business Erazo had with the Social Security (IESS) system,” but provided no details.

In a second possible complication, three news sites report that Erazo is being sued for culpable homicide in a medical malpractice case. The case involves a second doctor and dates to 2022.