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CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuela‘s government imposed rolling blackouts of four hours every other day throughout the country on Tuesday to combat an energy crisis.

President Hugo Chavez has said rationing is necessary to prevent water levels in Guri Dam — the cornerstone of Venezuela’s energy system — from falling to critical lows and causing a widespread power collapse. Drought has cut the flow of water into the dam, which feeds three hydroelectric plants that supply 73 percent of Venezuela’s electricity.

Rolling blackouts will begin in the capital of Caracas on Wednesday, said Javier Alvarado, president of the city’s state electric utility.

“With these measures, we’re trying to keep Guri from taking us to a very critical situation at the end of February, from creating let’s say a total shutdown of the country,” Electricity Minister Angel Rodriguez told state television Monday night as he announced the nationwide rationing plan.

Government officials had already imposed some cuts to help the country get through the dry season until May, when seasonal rains are predicted to return.

The government recently reduced the hours of electricity supply for shopping centers and required businesses and large residential complexes to cut energy use by 20 percent or face fines.

Chavez’s government has also partially shut down state-run steel and aluminum plants. The president announced last week that many public employees will have shorter workdays — from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. — except those in offices that tend to the public.

Some parts of the country have already been enduring unplanned blackouts for months, as demand has outstripped the electrical supply. The energy output from the Guri Dam’s three hydroelectric plants has also declined below its normal capacity.

The increased rationing will help cover a 12 percent gap between energy supply and demand, due to the situation at Guri and at some thermoelectric plants that are operating below capacity, Alvarado said.

He said water levels at the dam in southeastern Venezuela have dropped drastically as a result of the El Nino weather phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean, saying “it’s a global phenomenon and it’s affected us in recent months.” He noted there has been particularly little rain in southeastern Venezuela, where the watershed that feeds Guri is located.

Chavez’s critics say his government is to blame because it has failed to complete enough power upgrades to keep up with increasing demand despite Venezuela’s bountiful oil earnings.

Alvarado said the Caracas subway, hospitals, media outlets and public institutions that tend to the public would not be affected.

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By Paula Vilella

CARACAS – Venezuela could close out the year with more than 18,000 murders, a scourge that is increasing and the solution to which, in the opinion of analysts, includes the disarmament of the civilian population.

It is calculated that in this country there are between 9 million and 15 million weapons in the hands of the public, the president of the Institute for Investigations of Coexistence and Citizen Security, or INCOSEC, Pedro Rangel, told Efe in an interview, drawing his figures from data from a congressional committee.

The media has determined that the average Venezuelan household has three weapons, something that is “completely out of proportion” in Rangel’s judgment since “the possession of weapons on the part of the civilian population notably influences the violence in the streets.”

INCOSEC figures gathered in the Caracas metropolitan area during the first half of 2009 show that 98 percent of the murders were committed with firearms and 60 percent of the bodies had been hit by more than five bullets.

This shows “exacerbated levels of violence,” Rangel said, noting that 36 percent of the victims were males between the ages of 15 and 29.

The Venezuelan Violence Observatory forecasts that, if the current trend is maintained, there will be 18,436 murders committed nationwide by the end of the year, and this estimate is “conservative” given that the final months of the year are usually the most violent, according to Observatory director Robeto Briceño-Leon.

From 1994 to 1998, the murder rate per 100,000 residents fell from 22 to 20, placing Venezuela among the Latin American countries with a moderately high rate of violence.

However, Venezuela now has a very high rate in the region, with an average of 40 deaths per day and 52 murders per 100,000 residents at the end of 2008.

Last year, there were more than 12,000 violent deaths in a country of 28 million inhabitants.

Concern over violence in society is rising among the public, which says that crime is the main problem besetting the country, according to Datanalisis opinion surveys.

Eighty percent of those surveyed say they are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the Hugo Chavez administration’s response in the matter.

However, Datanalisis director Luis Vicente Leon told Efe that “the president does not seem to be perceived by the Venezuelan population as being responsible” for the problem.

“When you ask them who is responsible for inflation, unemployment or shortages, the government or the president always bears an important share, a concrete responsibility. However, the responsibility fragments in an amazing way” in the case of crime, he added.

Chavez does not speak about the matter much at all because “he doesn’t want to make it into one of his problems,” and besides the bulk of the population believes that the problem has no solution, he said.

“In the poor neighborhoods, it doesn’t matter if they kill 60 or 70 … in a weekend, they coexist with insecurity and they’ve done so for many years. Therefore, they don’t link it with Chavez but with poverty, with their circumstances,” Leon said.

At INCOSEC, Rangel disagrees with this analysis because – according to government figures – poverty levels have diminished significantly in Venezuela since Chavez took office in 1999.

In his judgment, the fact that 93 percent of crimes go unpunished constitutes “an invitation to the criminal and a blow to the pride of the law enforcement bodies.”

“We need a police model that is governed by transparency, equality and justice in the process of recruiting, supported by a system of social security and appropriate individual and collective equipment allocation,” Rangel said.

The steps that INCOSEC proposes following include pushing for the Weapons, Explosives and Munitions bill, activating a national disarmament plan and fostering changes in behavior in all sectors of society. EFE