Last Saturday was a big day in our street because it witnessed one of the important changes in the life of all the families in the street. Mohammed, the owner of the private generator had to move his generator to another location after he got a warning from the owner of the land where he used to put his generator. The landlady told him that he can’t any more use her land.

The work started since 8 a.m. Members of the families who subscribe came to the location and started detaching their cables. It’s not easy to detach a cable that passes over many houses and electricity poles. The length of some cables is over 100 meters belong to families live in other streets.  After more than four hours of hard work, so many people took their cables while others gave up and left the mission to the owner of the generator. To make things worse, the owner of the generator told us that he needs two more days to re install the generator in the new location. All the men in the place were shouting and complaining because two days without electricity means extra expenses for all the families because they must use their small private generators. The only man who was happy that day is our neighbor who sells gasoline. Many families sent their kids to buy 5 liters of gasoline for the home generator.  Shouting and screaming ended with cursing the government which failed even after eight years to provide electricity in spite of the billions of dollars spent during more than eight years. In my neighborhood, having the national electricity power for ten hours a day is not more than a dream.  In the best circumstances, we have it for Seven hours a day makes life very difficult especially in winter. For example, waking up early morning and planning to have an early bath is not always a doable dream especially for those who live with big families like me.

One of the angry people shouted “why does the government pay budget for the ministry of electricity?  Why does it pay salaries for unproductive employees?” and finally he asked simply “why don’t they give us the money to manage our electricity problem instead of wasting money?” The last question was the most important one for me. It reflects clearly the disappointment of Iraqis. Obviously, we don’t trust our government and our politicians in general because after even after eight years of collapsing Saddam’s regime, our politicians failed in everything. They failed in providing services, they failed in forming a real national government, they failed in protecting Iraq and they failed in saving Iraqis lives. They succeeded only in one thing. They perfectly succeeded in dividing Iraqis.