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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| In Venezuela’s housing projects, even loyalists have had enough |
| 2016-05-23 |
| [THEGUARDIAN] The Villa Poligono housing project, near the city of San Félix, in Venezuela’s south-eastern Bolívar state, is somewhere President Maduro might once have felt his popularity was secure. His smiling, moustached image features prominently on a vast poster at the entrance to the complex of bungalows. Poligono is part of the socialist government’s Gran Misión Vivienda, the great housing mission designed to provide rent-free homes to those most in need, under the slogan "decent homes for the people". But for the past few weeks few of its residents have been at home. Instead they can be found on the road outside, mounting a noisy protest. "We’ve had enough’, says Anna Karena, 44. "This has to end." She has multiple grievances. Shockingly, none of the breezeblock homes in the entire complex has ever had running water. When the residents were given their keys in 2014, they were told that the plumbing would soon be connected. It never was. More recently, electricity blackouts, lasting four hours at a time, have become routine, as a combination of drought and inefficiency has left the nation without enough generating capacity. But what seems to have persuaded her and her neighbours to protest openly is the extreme scarcity of basics, such as rice, soap and medicines. Unable to afford the exorbitant prices of the rampant black market, Karena has to queue for hours, sometimes from before dawn, just to buy enough to eat. Hers are the same allegations of government incompetence and corruption that are echoing across this nation. A crash in the global price of oil, by far Venezuela’s most significant export, has unmasked both its dysfunctional economy and a calamitous lack of foresight on the part of its leaders. It is grappling with the world’s deepest recession, the world’s highest inflation (estimated at around 500%), and the world’s second highest murder rate. It has no sovereign wealth fund and is facing the serious risk of default by November. |
| Posted by:Fred |