[ad_1]
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelans woke up Friday to a massive power outage in the capital, Caracas, and several states.
President Nicolas Maduro’s government blamed “electricity sabotage” for the blackout, which it said occurred around 4:50 a.m.
Communications Minister Freddy Nanez said officials were working to restore power. “No one can take away the peace and tranquility of our Venezuelan people,” he wrote in a message shared with reporters on Telegram.
All 24 Venezuelan states were at least partially affected, Nuñez said in a Telegram voice message, describing the outage as a “desperate” attempt by Maduro’s opponents to violently overthrow the president.
“The whole of government has been mobilized to counter this new aggression,” he said.
In 2019, Venezuela was in the midst of a period of political turmoil and the country suffered frequent power outages, which the government almost always blamed on the opposition, but energy experts said were caused by bush fires that damaged power lines and poor maintenance of the country’s hydropower infrastructure.
Many of the energy issues have eased as the South American country’s economy has stabilized, high inflation has eased and de facto dollarization has reduced shortages of imported goods.
Yet after last month’s contentious presidential election, officials were quick to blame opponents for even minor disruptions, as was the case on Tuesday, when a power outage affected Caracas and several central states.
New Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, considered the country’s second most powerful man, said after the earlier blackouts: “This is a consistent strategy of the opposition, of the enemies of this country, to exert influence on the people.”
Residents of the capital took Friday’s disruptions in stride, with traffic flowing more lightly than usual during the normally busy rush hour, and some complaining they were unable to contact family members due to poor mobile phone coverage.
Alejandra Martinez, a 25-year-old saleswoman, said she noticed the power was out when a fan stopped working. “I thought the power would come back, so I went back to sleep,” she said as she tried to catch a bus to work at dawn in Caracas. “But when I woke up, I realized the power was out.”
Venezuela’s power grid relies heavily on the Guri Dam, a massive hydroelectric power station that opened in the late 1960s. The Venezuelan power system has been overwhelmed in recent years by poor maintenance, a lack of alternative energy supplies, and a brain drain of engineering talent, with an estimated 8 million Venezuelan migrants fleeing economic hardship.
[ad_2]
Source link
