Today is one more sandy summer day in Iraq. A sandy day in Iraq means an endless suffering for all Iraqi and when I say all Iraqis, I mean all regular Iraqi people who are not officials, politicians or parliament members because those three levels of Iraqis do not know anything about our life as normal Iraqi people. Each of them has his or her own life style which includes travels everywhere and sending the family to live mostly in Europe or USA and of course having a giant generator in his or her villa in Iraq that can provide the necessary power to turn on as many AC units as they need. When I say regular Iraqis, I am talking about those poor people who depend of the private small generators they have which can provide them with six or seven Ampers which is rare enough to turn on two air coolers and few lights. Those people who do crazy preparations and strict procedures to stop the conquer of dust especially if they have members in their families who are infected with asthma or any kind allergy.
Among all the kinds of public services that Iraqis need, the electricity power supply isthe most important ones. Except for Kurdistan region which has almost 20 to 22 hours of power supply a day, all the rest 15 Iraqi provinces have it for less than five hours a day and even these five hours are not full five hours. Two days ago, I called a friend in Basra in south Iraq and he told me that even within the one hours they have each four or five hours, they have a power failure.
I don't know what the Iraqi ministry of electricity was doing during six years since the invasion but definitely it did not implement any project because the power supply did not improve, on the contrary, it became worse. As an Iraqi man, I can not trust any more what the Iraqi government say about rebuilding this country.
Imagine living in such weather when you have national power supply for only four hours a day. I took these two pictures at 2:30 pm Baghdad local time. The highest temperature today in Baghdad is 109 F and the lowest is expected to reach 83
please tell me what is the cost of 1KW electricity in Iraq?
Posted by: Sophie | September 26, 2009 at 01:02 PM
It must be miserable, especially for small children and older folk, much less for those living in tents or in warehouses like the people Jenan wrote of recently.
In the U.S., a determined or strong person is sometime called someone with a lot of "grit" (sand). Seems like in Iraq, that is the literal truth.
Posted by: Laura | July 29, 2009 at 11:12 AM