DJ Venezuelans In Merida Protest Electricity Rationing - Report

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CARACAS (Dow Jones)--About 5,000 people marched in the Andean city of Merida to protest the Venezuelan government's forced electricity rationing due to power shortages, the leading El Universal newspaper reported Friday.
The Thursday protest was led by university students and also included the city's mayor, Lester Rodriguez.
"We're protesting for our rights and we're not going to stand for anymore abuses from the government," the newspaper quoted Rodriguez as saying.
Merida faces power blackouts three times a day, in addition to water shortages, the newspaper reported.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez began urging citizens in October to start using less electricity when it became apparent that rising demand for power had overstretched the nation's electricity grid system.
As demand continued to grow, the government in December began ordering factories to cut power usage by 20% and requiring shopping malls to be open no more than 10 hours a day.
But drawing the most protests has been the government's orders to schedule power blackouts in areas around the country for up to four hours at a time.
It also tried to apply the electricity rationing to the capital city of Caracas, but after one day the blackouts created so much havoc and protests that the government said Caracas would be exempt from the outages.

-By Dan Molinski, Dow Jones Newswires; (58) 414-120-5738; dan.molinski@dowjones.com

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 22, 2010 08:19 ET (13:19 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.- - 08 19 AM EST 01-22-10

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