PAT MELIK
Venezuela’s Hapless President Nicolas Maduro has designated every Friday in the months of April and May as a non-working holiday, in a bid to save electricity.
The country will unveil details of a 60-day plan to conserve energy Thursday, Maduro said, adding that measures would include asking large users such as shopping malls and hotels to generate their own electricity for nine hours a day.
Heavy industries operating in the country will be asked to cut consumption by 20 percent, he said.
“This plan for 60 days, for two months, will allow the country to get through the most difficult period with the most risk,” Maduro said on state television late Wednesday.
“I call on families, on the youth, to join this plan with discipline, with conscience and extreme collaboration to confront this extreme situation” of the drought blamed on the El Nino weather system.
The announcement comes after Maduro shut down the country for a week over the Easter holiday last month, giving workers an extra three days off.
We have detailed exclusively on Nairametrics how ideologically rigid states like Venezuela and increasingly Nigeria are being destroyed economically by socialist policies.
Since Nigeria has increasingly borrowed Venezuelas policies on FX, fuel subsidies and capital controls we hope this is not something the Buhari administration intends to copy.