CARACAS, March 11 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Venezuelans woke up to a fourth day of an unprecedented nationwide blackout on Sunday, leaving residents concerned about the impacts of the lack of electricity on the South American country’s health, communications and transport systems.
“The national electrical system has been subject to multiple cyberattacks,” Pres Nicolas Maduro wrote on Twitter. “However, we are making huge efforts to restore stable and definitive supply in the coming hours.”
Maduro – who is facing a challenge to his rule by the leader of the opposition-led congress, Juan Guaido – has blamed the blackout on an act of “sabotage” by the United States at the Guri hydroelectric dam.
Guaido invoked the constitution to assume an interim presidency in January, arguing that Maduro’s 2018 re-election was fraudulent. He has been recognised as Venezuela’s legitimate leader by the United States and most Western countries.
The blackout, which began on Thursday afternoon, increased frustration among Venezuelans already suffering widespread food and medicine shortages, as the once-prosperous OPEC nation’s economy suffers a hyper-inflationary collapse.
Lines formed outside the few Caracas gas stations with open pumps, while many motorists stopped along the sides of highways to use their mobile phones in the few areas of the city with signal.
Some bakeries, supermarkets and restaurants were open and running on backup generators. Many were asking customers to pay in US dollar bills, since debit card payment systems were not working reliably and local bolivar notes have been scarce for years.
At hospitals, the lack of power combined with the absence or poor performance of backup generators led to the death of 17 patients across the country, non-governmental organization Doctors for Health said on Saturday.
Power returned briefly to parts of Caracas and other cities on Friday, but went out again around midday on Saturday. Electricity experts said that outage was most likely due to failures in the transmission system, and that the government lacks the equipment and staff to repair them.
The outage is by far the longest in decades. In 2013, Caracas and 17 of the country’s 23 states were hit by a six-hour blackout, while in 2018 eight states suffered a 10-hour power outage, government officials said at the time. — NNN-AGENCIES
