Starting on Monday, Venezuela will begin rationing electricity, shutting of power to every home for four hours a day as the country suffers a drought.
The rationing will last 40 days after rains in the north of the country failed to ease the crisis, Electricity Minister Luis Motta Dominguez said Thursday on state television. The ministry will release details of the daily cuts shortly, he said.
“We ask for the cooperation of all Venezuelans,” Motta Dominguez said. “It’s time to be patriotic and united to combat and minimize these climatic effects.”
Yes, Venezuela, time to patriotically embrace your slow-motion suicide.
President Nicholas Maduro blamed the El Nino for the drought and asked citizens to cut back using their hair dryers and irons. So far the country has reduced the number of days in the work week and extended holidays to curtail electricity use, but it has not sufficiently reduced electricity consumption.
The electricity rationing follows other rationing of utilities and resources:
The rationing will add to the hardships of Venezuelans who have already become accustomed to water rationing, standing in long lines to buy basic goods due to shortages, triple-digit inflation and the nation’s deepest recession in more than a decade as a collapse in oil revenue saps government coffers.
In addition to the electricity shortage, Venezuela is also facing a beer shortage, according to Empresas Polar SA, the country largest private beer company. The company will have to stop producing beer on Wednesday because it cannot get the foreign currency to purchase melted barley to make the beer. Venezuela has the highest per capita beer consumption in South America.
Just like communist Soviet Union had the highest per capita vodka consumption in the world. And who can blame them?
