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LATIN AMERICA |
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And No Singing in the Shower -- Shortages
Plague Water, Electricity in Oil-Rich
Venezuela
By Jeremy Morgan, Latin American Herald
Tribune
CARACAS -- President Hugo Chavez wants
people to keep their showertime as short as
possible. In yet another lengthy night-time
discourse on radio and television earlier
this week, Chavez explained that people only
need one minute to shampoo their hair,
another to soap their bodies and a third to
hose themselves down and wash it all off.
And no singing!
"Some people sing in the shower, in the
shower half an hour. No, kids, three minutes
is more than enough. I've counted, three
minutes, and I don't stink, " he said during
a televised Cabinet meeting.
There is a rationale behind all this; it's
not that the president's suddenly against
keeping clean, perhaps because "imperialist"
yanquis are well-known for taking showers at
the drop of a hat and at any time of the
day.
"If you are going to lie back, in the bath,
with the soap and you turn on the -- what's
it called -- the Jacuzzi ... imagine that?
What kind of communism is that? We're not in
times of Jacuzzi?" Chavez said, to laughter
from his ministers around him.
Venezuela is in the throws of what used to
be clearly identifiable as the rainy season
-- a distinction now blurred by global
warming, although it's still the epoch of
torrential downpours and, in between,
ponderous clouds overhead rather than
heavenly blue skies.
Despite the rain, there's a severe water
shortage. Large parts of this city are now
being subjected to official rather than
undeclared rationing, in some cases of
anything up to 14 hours a day without water.
Officials finally confessed that there was
water, water everywhere, but not a drop to
drink, and have now unveiled a "schematic"
of when supplies would be cut off, and
where.
Hence the presidential homily about not
making a meal of taking a shower. But it's
not just water that's in dire straits and in
urgent need of presidential attention. The
power grid isn't coming anywhere near up to
scratch, either.
Oil-rich Venezuela has been plagued by five
major black-outs across huge swathes of the
country this year so far. Anzoategui state
went without electricity for 12 hours on
Thursday this week after yet another
break-down in the system. In one town,
people went out on to the streets at night
to make known their displeasure at this
latest failure (which also affected the
Latin American Herald Tribune's
international website repeatedly this week).
Coincidence or not, around the same time,
Chavez was esconced with his senior
ministers. They were discussing what to do
about the persistent shortcomings of the
electricity system.
Chavez decided to set up a new Electric
Energy Ministry, and appointed National
Assembly Deputy Angel Rodriguez to head it
up. Rodriguez has presided over the energy
and mines committee at the legislature for
several years and in addition, according to
Chavez, is "a worker, a great fighter, an
honest man, studious" -- all of which was
why he'd been picked for the hot seat.
By now, Chavez was talking live to the
people, and making it quite clear he was not
best pleased with the state of affairs in
the power sector. One thing he particularly
wanted to know was what was going on at
state-owned electricity companies. "Here I
have denunciations," he declared. "The
bureaucracy, instead of diminishing, has
increased." The same old people were in
charge and they were being paid "very high"
salaries.
The president of the national electricity
corporation, Corpoelec, Hipolito Izquierdo,
a retired general who apparently wasn't in
the presidential firing line, warned that
power demand was set to rise by 7.1%,
despite the slowdown in the economy and
considerably higher than the average 4.5
percent growth rate recorded in recent
years.
The increase, it would seem, is largely down
to greater demand from domestic consumers.
Just why this is happening isn't clear,
although one senior official claimed it
reflected "the improvement in the quality of
life of the population," by which he meant
people's increased purchasing power, which
was allowing them to buy more consumer
products -- electric can openers are a still
somewhat unknown quantity amongst the
general population, for example.
Even if that's the case, it would appear
that quite a lot of people aren't paying
their bills. Cadafe, a subsidiary of
Corpoelec which feeds electricity to about
80% of the territory making up the country,
is sitting on a stack of unpaid bills worth
BsF2.5 billion, or around $1 billion at the
official exchange rate. Of this, some BsF869
million is due from domestic consumers in
residential areas of high per capita
consumption -- in other words, the better
off.
Chavez unveiled an energy "rationalization
and saving" plan, and ordered big state
companies including the national oil
corporation, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA),
to draw up plans for an "intensive
reduction" in their energy usage during the
next 15 days. Public offices would have to
slash their consumption by 20 percent under
a series of "severe norms" that Chavez had
decreed into law that very same night.
There was also to be a "strategic
commission" headed by Vice President Ramon
Carrizalez to oversee the energy savings
drive. This commission would include workers
from the industry, and imports of electrical
equipment which were not geared to low power
usage were now banned.
Just how much tougher the new power-saving
regime gets remains to be seen. But industry
analysts say the solution isn't draconian
cuts in consumption but action to cure
long-running ills in power generation and
transmission.
The government appears to recognize this,
which doesn't necessarily mean it knows what
to do. Earlier this year, Chavez announced
that $20 billion was being allocated to
repairing and expanding the electricity
sector during the next five years. To date,
however, details of what this program will
actually consist of have yet to be spelled
out in any detail.
In a separate development, six bingo halls
and casinos in Caracas were abruptly shut
down for 72 hours late Thursday night.
However, this apparently had nothing to do
with the rolling power crisis.
Instead, a sudden swoop by inspectors from
the tax collection agency, Seniat, had found
that things were not as they should be. Two
other "clandestine" casinos operating out of
a shopping mall were also obliged to close
their doors.
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