MILLIONS of Venezuelans remain without electricity nearly a week after a power substation failed. At the time of going to press, the blackout, which began on 7 March, had entered its sixth day. It has led to looting, hospital deaths and communication outages across the country.
The power failure is affecting 16 states. In the capital, Caracas, electricity has returned intermittently, and the metro system is out of service. Although oil rich, the country relies on hydropower for electricity. The government has attributed the blackout to a fault at the Guri hydropower plant, which provides 80 per cent of the nation’s power.
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Disputed president Nicolás Maduro blamed the fault on politically motivated sabotage, but critics say years of underinvestment in infrastructure has led to deteriorating dams and chronic power shortages. Sporadic blackouts are common. There was an outage of similar magnitude in October 2018.
