Another example of the end-game of socialism. From Venezuela's EL UNIVERSAL:
National power grid nearing collapse
Power rationing is not new for Venezuelans. Over the past fifteen years there have been some crises, such as that of 2009-2010, that have forced Venezuelans to adapt their lifestyle to power outages. What is new, however, is the seriousness of the current situation which, according to some experts, is expected to get worse over the next two months if the necessary measures are not taken immediately.
To major general Luis Alfredo Motta Domínguez, the Minister of Electricity and President of the National Electricity Corporation (Corpoelec) - a state-owned holding company created in 2007 to consolidate the power sector - the current crisis is a one-off problem due to the extensive drought associated with the recurring weather phenomenon commonly known as El Niño, which has caused water levels in the Central Hidroeléctrica Simón Bolívar (aka the Guri Dam) to drop to record-low levels.
The term holding company is a polite way of saying that the Venezuelan government nationalizing the whole thing - kicking out the foreign corporations who had built the grid and who were successfully maintaining it. A bit more on the root problems:
According to a diagnostic assessment of the electricity sector submitted to the National Assembly last February 5 by engineers with the Ricardo Zuloaga Group – a team of experts dedicated to the analysis of the behavior of the national electricity system - the crisis that has started over the years of revolution has evolved to the point that the electricity sector went from providing a continuous, reliable service in 1999, the year when the current regime came to power, to deterioration in service with frequent power outages and interruptions in 2007, and finally to a scenario of continued power rationing in 2016.
The government is not operating on a basis of reality. They had a great source of income from their oil deposits. The problem is that they gave away all of this money as free shit to the people in exchange for votes. They did not spend on penny on infrastructure - always kicking that can down the road.
Now that oil prices have gone down, they no longer have the revenue stream but their population still demands the free shit and will get angry if it does not come.
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