Continued power outages irk Kabul residents, industrialists

KABUL (Pajhwok): Continued electricity blackouts have forced 90 percent factories in capital Kabul to stop functioning, while Da Afghanistan Breshna Shirkat (DABS) says efforts are underway to resolve this issue.

Load shedding surged at a time when recently the DABS announced the renewal of electricity purchase agreement with Uzbekistan for 2023 and linked the outage with technical problems in Uzbekistan.

We get two hours electricity in day and night: people

Fariba, the resident of Dasht-i-Barchi, area of Kabul said: “Every year during winter there is shortage of electricity and like the past winter this time we have no electricity in winter.”

She said long hours electricity outage put all the people in problems: “These days we have two hours electricity in 24 hours,” she said.

Baheer Ahmad, the resident of Kar-i-Naw area, said all the people suffering from electricity outage

“During the day we have two or three hours of electricity and the remaining day we have no electricity.”

He also asked the government to ensure the provision of electricity.

Industrialists Union:

Abdul Jabbar Safi, head of the Afghanistan Industrialists, also complained against load shedding and said: “In the Pul-i-Charkhi Industrial Park 585 factories are functioning but due to electricity outage 90 percent stopped functioning.”

He said up to 45,000 people are busy working in these factories but due to outage most of their lost their work.

“It has been 15 days since there has been no electricity at the Pul-i-charkhi industrial Park, and all the workers are on leave and the work had declined to Zero.”

He asked the caretaker government to take steps for Afghanistan’s self-sufficiency in terms of electricity and to pay serious attention to the establishment of power generation factories inside the country

Referring to the sources of energy production in Afghanistan, he says that there are sufficient water, wind, solar, coal and gas resources in the country

Earlier, DABS, said sustained efforts were made to open the blocked channels of the Kabul-Logar River, and by doing this, the electricity production capacity of the Mahiper hydropower project increased from 18 megawatts to 24 megawatts per hour.

DABS Head Mawlavi Hikmatullah Akhundzada said continued outage was because of technical issue inside Uzbekistan.

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