Wells help Venezuela’s wealthy survive

Neighbourhood water shortages have sparked more than 400 protests countrywide

Reaching for the faucet felt like a frustrating game of chance for Elizabeth Robles.

At first, water flowed only one or two days a week, so Robles, president of her homeowners’ association, hired trucks to fill the building’s underground storage tank. With self-imposed rationing, the residents had water — but only for an hour, three times a day.

“When you get home at five in the afternoon all sweaty, you couldn’t take a shower,” said Robles, a small-business owner and lawyer. “It’s like punishment by water.”

Finally they were fed up. Since the government couldn’t provide water, they decided to drill their own well alongside their apartment building in the tony Campo Alegre neighbourhood, an increasingly popular solution among the well-to-do as Venezuela’s water system crumbles along with its socialist-run economy.

Venezuela’s meltdown has been accelerating under President Nicolas Maduro’s rule, prompting masses of people to abandon the nation in frustration at shortages of food and medicine, street violence, rampant blackouts — and now sputtering faucets.

Less fortunate struggle

Robles said she and her neighbours hired a drilling firm in February for $7,000 (Dh25,707) — roughly $280 per family. At least three other buildings on their tree-lined street, which is near the city’s most-exclusive country club, have hired the same engineer.

Meanwhile, the less fortunate struggle with dwindling public water supplies.

AP ■ A worker clears the mud from a drill as a water well is put in at a luxury apartment complex in the Campo Alegre neighbourhood of Caracas.

AP ■ Grass sits dry due to the lack of water at a wealthy apartment complex in Caracas, Venezuela.