Recently, an electrical fault damaged the computer used by Zurita de Sousa, 53, to manage a condominium of a shopping center in downtown Caracas. The same day, power outages have been reported inat least, twelve states, of the 23 that Venezuela has, in addition to the Capital District.
Hopeful, she went to specialized technicians, but the only thing she received was condolences. The diagnosis: the motherboard. They told her that she is beyond repair, as she explained to Eph.
«It was my work team, it had all the information, which I lost all, I now had to resort to doing it manually. Repeatedly these failures occur daily“, said.
He found out in electronics stores that this equipment sells new for approximately $600, an amount difficult for De Sousa to come up with. It was the second time a service failure damaged him.
In 2017, the fridge in his house broke down and it was not until last year that he was able to buy a used one.
Almost half a million electrical failures have been recorded since the Maduro government promised to recover the electrical system, after the great blackout of March 7, 2019which lasted almost a week.
From March of that year to February 2022, at least 436,285 failures were documented, according to the Committee of People Affected by Blackouts, a body that keeps track of power outages and their effects, in the absence of official figures. .
no improvement
The data recorded by the committee shows that the flaws have increased since then, some of which the government blames external attacks, planned by the US and Colombia, to the Venezuelan hydroelectric plants.
Likewise, it blames the blockade due to international sanctions for not having the material capacity to solve the problem and improve the electricity supply for Venezuelans.
In 2020, at least 157,719 service interruptions were reported, a figure that represents an increase of 86% compared to 2019; and in 2021, 190,006 were documented, an increase of 20.4% over the previous year.
During 2021, the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict (OVCS) documented 2,066 protests for basic services, of which 587 were in rejection of the constant and prolonged power cuts.
So far in 2022, the 47.1% of Venezuelans have valued the electricity service negativelyand 76.4% claim to have suffered loss or damage to some appliance, according to the Observatory of Public Services (OVSP).
“Three years have passed and there has been no improvement. You often see dips in the Metropolitan Area of Caracas that were not often seen, and in the interior these failures are daily. The collapsed system continues, that has not decreased, rather, it has increased », he told Eph Aixa López, president of the Committee of People Affected by Blackouts.
One before and one after
Nine years after the late President Hugo Chávez decreed an electrical emergency, Venezuela experienced, according to the committee, eight blackouts that left a deep scar in the population and that, in turn, collapsed other services such as water and telecommunications.
Only during the first major blackout of 2019, from March 7 to 11, 21 patients died, according to the NGO Doctors for Health.
it was a before and an after. It became essential to have a power plant as an unofficial requirement to operate in the country.
And while Venezuelans were looking for a way to acquire basic products in the midst of the failures and the businessmen put up with it so as not to close, the Executive blamed interruptions on sabotage and attacksonce again, and even cable damage from iguana bites.
The facilities, however, have been under the custody and control of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) since the Venezuelan government ordered it in 2013.
A report by Transparencia Venezuela, published in March 2020, indicates that as of 2010, when the State had already expropriated and nationalized 19 electricity companies, the supply crisis worsened, with “perverse effects on daily lifeaffecting the right to education, quality public services, work, trade and even the right to life.
According to the document, the governments of Chávez and Maduro “asigned 40 contracts by hand for a total of 37,691 million dollars.” However, “only 23 of them were implemented and an overprice of 23,033 million dollars is estimated”.
Meanwhile, outages continue to increase. In January 2022, at least 2,390 failures; and in February, 4,178according to the Committee of People Affected by Blackouts.
