Present Situation
The communal councils have been wildly popular. Eight months after the law was passed, over 16,000 councils had already formed throughout the country. 12,000 of them had received funding for community projects – $1 billion total, out of a national budget of $53 billion. The councils had established nearly 300 communal banks, which have received $70 million for micro-loans. In January 2007 the government announced a transfer of the equivalent of $5 billion USD for the use by communal councils. Thanks to such funds, the councils have implemented thousands of community projects, such as street pavings, sports fields, medical centers, and sewage and water systems.
As of March 2007 19,500 councils have been registered.
Local newspapers frequently include multiple stories about communal councils and advertisements by mayors celebrating their transfer of funds to the councils as doing their part for the “5th Motor of the Revolution: explosion of popular power”. (See links below)
As of April 2007 a majority of the councils are still provisional going through a process of legitimization, registering their official documents, electing spokespersons and generally formalizing their structure according to the new law.
Read more about this topic: Venezuelan Communal Councils
Famous quotes containing the words present and/or situation:
“In the present state we are in, we find such a strong sympathy and union between our souls and bodies, that the one cannot be touched or sensibly affected, without producing some corresponding emotion in the other.... We are not angels, but men cloathed with bodies, and, in some measure governed by our imaginations.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“Much poetry seems to be aware of its situation in time and of its relation to the metronome, the clock, and the calendar. ... The season or month is there to be felt; the day is there to be seized. Poems beginning “When” are much more numerous than those beginning “Where” of “If.” As the meter is running, the recurrent message tapped out by the passing of measured time is mortality.”
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