Venezuela’s electricity woes continue for a 7th day
Caracas — Venezuelans are dealing with a new blackout Sunday affecting several regions, marking the seventh straight day of power woes in this South American country.
Officials, for their part, reported a fifth act of “sabotage†against the National Electric System (SEN), which has been dealing with power outages since March 7.
The power went out around 9:40 a.m. in almost all areas of the capital, where electric service had been restored after an outage on Saturday night.
President Nicolas Maduro ‘s administration said on Saturday night that the outage had been caused by a “double synchronized attack†on the grid that left millions of households without power on Friday and Saturday night.
Media reports said that 21 of Venezuela’s 23 states were without power for at least a few hours.
Residents, meanwhile, told EFE that in some states, such as Merida, Zulia and Trujillo, the outages have lasted more than 48 hours.
On March 25, electric service went out in almost all areas of this petroleum-producing nation.
Power was restored to a large portion of the country late on March 26, but an outage around 5:00 a.m. the next day knocked out the electricity.
The latest power outages come nearly a month after the massive blackout that Venezuela experienced on March 7 that kept virtually the whole country in the dark for five days until the government managed to regain control of the situation and restore electric service.
The government said at the time that sabotage at the Guri hydroelectric complex was to blame for the blackout.
Maduro directly blamed the United States and the opposition for the alleged sabotage, claiming that “electromagnetic†attacks had been staged on the electric grid.
The opposition, however, blamed the Maduro regime for failures in the system, saying that the government’s poor management of the grid was the real cause of the outage.
The early March blackout caused about 15 deaths due to the lack of electricity at Venezuelan hospitals, the opposition claims, while officials contend that just two people died.
