(Caracas) A general power outage affected the whole of Venezuela on Friday morning, including the capital Caracas, reported Freddy Nanez, Minister of Communication, who spoke of “sabotage”.
“Urgent, at 4:50 today, Friday, August 30, there was an electrical sabotage in Venezuela, a sabotage against the national electrical system that affected almost the entire national territory, the 24 states report a total or partial loss of electricity supply,” Nanez said on public television.
The blackout comes as the country is mired in a post-election crisis a month after the July 28 presidential election that saw the contested re-election of President Nicolas Maduro while the opposition claimed victory.
The country regularly experiences small local power outages and load shedding, but not widespread blackouts across the country as is currently the case. Western regions such as Tachira and Zulia, once the oil capital, are experiencing daily power outages.
Venezuela was traumatized by a massive five-day power outage in March 2019 (which lasted longer in some areas).
The government regularly attributes these breakdowns to “attacks” orchestrated by the United States and the opposition to overthrow it.
However, opposition leaders and many experts believe that this is the result of lack of investment and mismanagement of the industrial apparatus that has deteriorated with the economic crisis.
“This is a new form of sabotage of electricity,” insisted the minister, referring to the 2019 blackout. “We experienced it in 2019, we know what it cost us in 2019, we know what it cost us to recover the national electricity system. Today, we have protocols to confront it.”