CARACAS (Dow Jones)--A group of professionals from within Venezuela's state-run electricity sector are rejecting government claims that weather is at fault for the country's crisis-level power shortages, according to a report Wednesday in the leading El Universal newspaper.
The Edelca Committee of Professionals and Technicians said in a statement that it wanted to "clear up to the nation that the crisis of insufficient electrical energy is not due to the climactic event El Nino, whose appearance in our geographic zone is cyclical and occurs in regular periods."
Edelca is one of the power companies that make up the state-run power giant Corpoelec.
Oil-rich Venezuela is gripped by major electricity shortages that have forced the government to cut power in areas throughout the nation for up to four hours a day every other day. The government has also told factories to cut usage by 20% and only allows shopping malls to be open for 10 hours a day.
President Hugo Chavez has consistently blamed a 2009 drought for the problems, and says the drought is due to El Nino and global warming. He says the lack of rain caused water levels to drop sharply at the Guri hydropower dam, which generates 73% of the country's electricity.
But critics, and now even government electricity workers themselves, say that while there was reduced rainfall in 2009, it was nothing off the charts, so the government should have been prepared for it.
"The principal cause of why (Venezuela) finds itself in this alarm situation is that the government hasn't been able to undertake in a timely manner the required investments" in the sector, the group said, according to the newspaper.

-By Dan Molinski, Dow Jones Newswires; (58) 414-120-5738; dan.molinski@dowjones.com
Click here to go to Dow Jones NewsPlus, a web front page of today's most important business and market news, analysis and commentary: http://www.djnewsplus.com/nae/al?rnd=2SRzes2YHmlP0hGr1064qA%3D%3D. You can use this link on the day this article is published and the following day.


(END) Dow Jones Newswires
01-20-10 0909ET
Copyright (c) 2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.