Yusmary has come to spend half of the money she earns each week on water. Isora goes to the black market for cooking gas cylinders. Rodrigo bought power plants for his home and business between the blackouts. Every man for himself.
The chronic failure of public services in Venezuela is de facto causing an informal and chaotic ‘privatization’, in which the population is forced to use its own resources to fill the vacuum created by the ineffectiveness of state networks.
“People need to solve and track their daily problems”, he explains to the AFP Jesús Vásquez, director of Monitor Ciudad, an NGO that monitors water, electricity and gas in Caracas and four states of this country with a population of 30 million.
Protests over the situation are a regular occurrence.
dry pipes
“The water has arrived!” sounds in La Jota, in the popular neighborhood of La Vega, in Caracas. They all fill buckets and barrels along the way, accumulating in reserve.
Yusmary Gómez, 36, mother of an 18-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl, normally gets water every 15 days, but the deficit can be greater: “Last year we were without a drop for three and a half months”.
He has an 800 liter tank given away by a politician during an election campaign.
The water that reaches her is yellowish, so she buys 20 liter bottles from the store where she works, to drink and cook. If the drought continues, you will have to use them for other purposes.
She writes them on a list and when she collects her salary, her boss withholds them. Filling two costs one dollar.
“I make $30 a week and I got 15″ Once the price of water is subtracted, Yusmary tells the AFP.
Monitor Ciudad estimates that residents of Caracas receive water for an average of 60 out of 168 hours per week.
It is common for the middle class to pay $70 for tanker trucks.
And in more affluent areas, privately drilling wells can cost $20,000, paid for by the residents of favored streets.
The average salary in the country is $150 per month, according to private estimates. The minimum wage is less than $5.
President Nicolás Maduro launched the ‘1×10 of Good Government’ program. The State receives notifications from communities in a mobile application and sends brigades to reopen aqueducts, pave roads or renovate outpatient clinics.
Maduro blames US sanctions on Venezuela for the crisis; But between divestments and allegations of corruption, the service collapse began years before those measures.
gas for medicine
Water isn’t the only thing that fails in La Jota.
Isora Bazán complains about interruptions in the distribution of household gas bottles. If there are delays in delivery, go to the black market.
“I stop buying medicine to start buying gas”, he says to the AFP She is retired, 61 years old.
In one way, resellers offer cylinders for between $10 and $20. Isora receives a monthly pension of less than $5.
According to Monitor Ciudad, only 17% of the population has gas pipelines.
Electrical systems
For Felicinda Mendoza, a 74-year-old neighbor in La Vega, a “power outage” damaged her refrigerator: “The lights go out often. It comes and goes, it comes and goes (…) Yesterday I took out the meat, the chicken, the little bit of food I had. All rotten.”
Blackouts are a nightmare, especially in the province where they can last for hours.
The state of Zulia (west) suffers from it every day.
“If we don’t look for a way to fix these things, we will die of a heart attack.”, he tells the AFP Rodrigo Crespo, a 35-year-old merchant who bought two small power plants, one for his home and one for his business in Los Puertos de Altagracia, a small town adjacent to Zulia’s capital, Maracaibo.
Each plant costs $350.
Maintaining them requires about $100 per month. They run on petrol, which is scarce, so Rodrigo is dependent on resellers. The other works on gas.
pandemic education
The collapse of education and public health completes the picture.
Yusmary’s girl often misses classes due to lack of water at a public kindergarten. “They send us a message (by phone): there is no water and therefore no activity,” he says.
Since the coronavirus pandemic, it has become common for public school students to be taught only two or three days a week due to the retirement of low-salary teachers.
A small private school is an alternative to Yusmary: “I would love it!”
Her eldest son, who went to work in a call center, promised to help her pay the $30 monthly allowance. (JO)
Questions and answers from the 2023 Elections
Source: Eluniverso
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