Opposition leader Juan Guaido alleged said that the government of President Nicolas Maduro is responsible for the 17 deaths due to Venezuela’s massive power outage.
Venezuela’s self-declared interim president, Guaido said that on 16 states continued to be completely without power, while six had partial power.
He also added that the private sector had lost at least $400 million from power outages.
Electricity was cut to 70% of the South American nation late last week, and officials warned that hospitals were at risk.
Guaido said the opposition had recorded 17 “murders” during the blackout.
“There is no service in the hospitals. These were the best hospitals in the country. If we are in the capital what is it like kilometers inside Venezuela where there hasn’t been or there has been very little gasoline with periodic cuts in electricity, without basic goods, with inefficient public transportation? You can say with all responsibility that Venezuela has already collapsed.”he added.
Maduro has blamed the United States for the blackout, telling supporters at a rally Saturday that the nation’s electric grid had been sabotaged. The United States has attributed the outage to the Maduro regime’s “incompetence.”
Guaido said he will call for a “state of national emergency” in a special session of parliament.
