MIAMI, United States.- The recent calls by Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro to recover basic services in the country before the end of the year do not seem to have come to fruition, since the problem is structural, “whose bases are sitting on the lack of maintenance and investment channeled for the modernization of old and deteriorated systems”.
According to a note this Thursday in Infobaeany solution to the problem of Venezuelans with water, electricity and the internet must respond to a plan that not only resolves momentary crises.
That is why Maduro’s promise resonated as one of the many excuses coming from Miraflores that Venezuelans are tired of hearing. The country is currently facing a crisis in the supply of water, electricity and gas, as well as in telecommunications.
According to the monitoring of investment in basic services by the NGO Cedice, in the last semester of 2022, the gap between budgeted and executed investments for these areas is relatively low, but the real problem is the direction of these investments, says the note .
The data revealed by Infobae reflect that, at least during July 2022, spending in Venezuela has been outlined towards the “correction of incidents” and, in services such as electricity, “barely 5% of the investments are aimed at improving the rates of coverage, quality and continuity in supply”.
The coordinator of Cedice’s public services monitor, Raúl Córdoba, told the EFE news agency that there were very few chances that Maduro’s promise could be fulfilled in the months remaining until the end of the year.
“There is a job to do that I believe that, in four months, five months, it will not be fully achieved; However, between now and December, a very slight improvement is outlined (…) because some improvement is expected given the commercial opening that the country is having, ”he explained.
However, although some data show a slight positive change, in practice, “specialists warn that focusing only on the continuity of services, ignoring or leaving behind indicators such as quality or level of coverage, will make any progress unsustainable. ”, indicates the text.
“We feel like we have been forgotten,” said Augusto Domínguez, a community leader from Colinas de La Trinidad, an affluent area east of Caracas.
According to Domínguez, Infobae reflects, the residents of his area counted not long ago 1,000 continuous days without water. During all that time they actively claimed with banners, on social networks, with protests, with letters and with calls that were not heard. The water finally came back on any given day, but never with the force necessary to reach middle-class homes.
The Infobae text reveals that Domínguez, like so many other citizens, has adapted to the fact that his telephone does not have a signal, that water does not come out of his pipes, that the streets are dark, and that the internet service does not work.
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