Venezuelan citizens took to the streets of Caracas yesterday as part of the government’s “Caracas Free Wheeling” campaign, a plan aimed at reducing the unnecessary use of cars and promoting a healthier lifestyle for residents of the nation’s capital.
With debates, exhibitions, workshops and demonstrations, this week Venezuela marked a decade since the coup and counter-coup of April 2002 which removed President Hugo Chavez from power in just under 48 hours.
Venezuela’s Minister of Communication and Information, Andres Izarra, has announced that the government will create a national alternative media network in a bid to bring together the country’s numerous community media sources.
On Monday the Venezuelan government handed out 600 musical instruments to children from ten schools in Caracas, as part of a strategy to prevent crime, and bringing the number of instruments handed out so far to a total of 1,600.
The Venezuelan government has suspended gun imports and sales, initially for a period of one year. It is also encouraging citizens to register their guns.
From costume parades, to beaches, theatre, and bullfighting, Venezuela has stopped for Carnival over the last week. Some festivities have received organisational support from communal councils, and the government has also reported a significant decrease in motor vehicle accidents.
A pilot plan encouraging inhabitants of the populous sectors of La Pastora, La Vega and Sucre in western Caracas to voluntarily hand over illegal firearms will begin in the coming weeks
On Sunday, National Youth Day, thousands of youth travelled from around Venezuela to La Victoria, Aragua state, for a giant civic-military march in commemoration of an 1814 battle during Venezuela’s war of independence.
The new Venezuela social network, called Plaxed, which allows streams of short posts (200 characters), as well as event invitations, polls, and questions, was created as an alternative site so that files or personal details found on the network “aren’t blocked, erased, or followed” by U.S laws, said its creator, Cesar Cotiz, a systems engineer student.
The Venezuelan vice minister for health services networks, José España, said that by May of next year, the country will be operating pharmaceutical plants in order to guarantee medicines supplies to the population.
According to preliminary data collected in the 2011 National Census of Population and Habitat, the president of Venezuela’s National Institute of Statistics, Elias Eljuri, said the national population has likely increased from 27 million to 28.5 million inhabitants.
Thousands of Venezuelan youth took to the streets of Caracas on Friday last week to demonstrate their desire for peace and support government measures calling for an end to the use of firearms in the streets of the South American country.
95,912 houses and apartments have been built in the first seven months of Venezuela’s massive house building program, the “Great Housing Mission” (GMV), confirmed energy and petroleum minister Rafael Ramirez yesterday.
