Protests break out in Venezuela over power blackout

Protests broke out in Venezuela after seven consecutive days of continuing electricity supply problems amid the latest power blackout.

The protests on Sunday spread from eastern Caracas into the western zones, including into Los Palos Grandes, el Cafetal, Coche, Catia and 23 de Enero, all residential areas of the spawling Venezuelan capital, reports Efe news.

In the central part of the city, a few streets from the Miraflores Palace, where President Nicolas Maduro lives, dozens of people blocked a downtown avenue and set various things on fire in the road to halt traffic.

Similar protests also took place the states of Carabobo, Aragua, Lara and Zulia.

The protests are coming after a week of electricity supply problems starting with two power outages on March 25 that have left the population of the Venezuelan capital largely without drinking water because there is no electricity to run the pumps.

The latest blackouts are coming when the country has barely managed to recover from another massive blackout on March 7, an outage that the Maduro government claimed was due to sabotage by the political opposition and the United States.

The opposition however, have said that the blackouts are caused by the government's ineptitude, poor maintenance of the power facilities, corruption and diverting huge amounts of money and other resources that should have gone into the electricity grid to ensure its robustness.

--IANS

ksk