Crisis in Venezuela: Unusual ways to pay for gasoline (almost free)

Egar takes the hose and rinses the bill of ten bolivars that the driver has just filled. Then he throws it into the cardboard box on the floor where he keeps the collection of the day of the petrol station in Caracas where he works.

There are many bolivars. But the bolivar is worth so little that the total value of this mountain of paper does not even reach half a dollar to change.

So with money, customers pay for something else and Egar appreciates more.

"Some people give me packages of rice flour or bread, they are good customers," he says.

"Sometimes they give you sweets, cookie packets, you accept what they give you."

Account that is rare on the day the pilots leave more than 2,000 bolivars, less than half a dollar to change, that it will additionally distribute with his companions.

In Venezuela, gasoline is almost completely free and an employee of those who serve it at the stations of the Venezuelan national oil company, PDVSA, receives a minimum wage of about 40,000 bolivares a month, or less than $ 10 per change.

And that 's why he imposed the custom of thanking them for their services by giving them a small amount of money … or the most unexpected things.

In the box of the gas station where Egar works, there is a marker with which he was paid this morning.

A short distance away, at the PDVSA petrol station in one of the corners of Rómulo Gallegos Avenue, employees stock banana bunches with which some carriers paid them on Tuesday mornings.

"Yesterday it was better because they gave us a lot of eggs," says one of them.

Although what is most appreciated, it is this elite of the privileged who can slip a dollar bill, the American currency, which has a growing presence in Venezuela of the crisis.

This puzzled everything that happened to one of them last week, when a driver paid his fuel with a vibrator.

"I caught him, but he had no batteries," says the employee amid bursts of laughter.

Maduro's plan

According to the CIA World Factbook, Venezuela is the country with the largest proven oil reserves.

Its president, Nicolás Maduro, announced last summer a controversial project to sell fuel at international prices, for which he invited all Venezuelans to register their cars in a national census of motor vehicles.

Maduro wanted to end the "deformity" of "given essence". Nearly a year after this announcement, the official price remains below half a cent per liter, which, according to consulting firm Global Petrol Prices, makes Venezuela the country where gasoline is the least dear world.

"Here, we bathe in oil," says one of the station's employees Rómulo Gallegos, hands soaked in gasoline.

That's why he is unhappy that there are "customers who do not even pay".

Antonio Marmoto explains by filling the tank of his truck that he usually leaves 10 bolivars (about US $ 0.002) in Caracas, but when he pbades by the state of Anzoategui, where he travels he often leaves nothing behind.

The price is so insignificant that many leave without paying without consequences.

Alexis Bozalo usually leaves 500 bolivars (less than 0.10 USD) to fill the deposit of his motorcycle. Despite the scarcity of the amount, he boasts of being more than the majority leaves.

"I'm doing it because it comes out of my heart," he says proudly.

"Gasoline is the only thing cheap in Venezuela," he said.

As a Venezuelan, he knows very well the cost of living in a country in the process of reaching the age of two, punished by hyperinflation.

But Venezuela is the land of paradoxes.

And despite the fact that the state gives almost gasoline and the oil is in abundance, refueling in much of the country becomes an almost impossible mission.

In states like Zulia, Bolivar or Táchira, people often have to line up for days to get gasoline because of supply problems, which according to the local press and many users of social media, have worsened in recent days. .

Venezuela's sustained decline in oil production due to the inefficiency of PDVSA's management and the consequences of US sanctions against Nicolás Maduro's government lead, according to experts, to a borderline situation.

Although PDVSA issued this week a statement in which it badured that it guaranteed a supply throughout the national territory, the experience on the roads of Venezuela indicates the opposite.

Cities converted into car parks

In Maracaibo, for example, one of the most important cities in the country and once the epicenter of the oil industry, the huge rows of cars adjacent to the service stations have become habitual.

Vanessa Rubio, from San Cristóbal, in the south-west of the country, recounts her harrowing experience of the last days.

"Here, getting gasoline has become a matter of survival of the fittest, it takes a lot of stamina to spend four days online."

"I arrived at the line Thursday at 8 am, in a line of about 5 kilometers, a man numbered the cars and gave me the 745," he says.

Rubio describes an apocalyptic scenario in a city barely equipped with public transport.

"San Cristóbal has become a large parking lot where people are ready to fight to defend their position in the queue."

Although there is also a space for solidarity.

"You end up getting to know people around you, favors and bends are made so that they can go home to bathe," says Rubio.

For patients who resist days of waiting, it is hoped that a gas pipe will be waiting for them at the lowest official price.

You pay more for one of the first positions in the row. "There are people who offer up to 50,000 or 60,000 Colombian pesos", the currency which, given the unstoppable depreciation of the bolivar, has become predominant in this part of Venezuela.

They are between 15 and 18 US dollars.