Afghanistan: Kabul residents irked over prolonged power cuts amid extreme cold

Kabul [Afghanistan], January 17 (ANI): Locals in Kabul have expressed their frustration over prolonged power cuts amid the freezing cold, adding to the miseries of people in Afghanistan, TOLOnews reported.

The outages have resulted in leaving people with numerous challenges a result of which they urge the authorities to address the matter. According to the residents, electricity is supplied for four to five hours daily, which is not enough for them. “The issue of electricity has reached its peak, especially in the Makrorayan area because we cannot use gas and the heating system is not activated yet,” a Kabul resident, Shabana lamented.

People also complained that due to the unavailability of electricity, they fall short of water too. The business community said the power shortage has also affected factories in Kabul’s industrial park.

“There is a water shortage. If we don’t have electricity, we don’t have water too,” said Sherzai, a Kabul local.
Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat (DABS), the nation’s power distributor, said that at least 30 per cent of Kabul’s electricity comes from domestic sources.

“We don’t have electricity even for one hour. We should use thermal power resources until the transmission lines for power supply from Uzbekistan are reconnected,” TOLOnews quoted Sakhi Ahmad Payman, first deputy of the Chamber of the Industry and Mine as saying.

As Afghanistan imports, most of its needed power from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Iran, the already existing economic and humanitarian crisis has put regular lives of people in trouble since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan.

Earlier in November, the operations director of DABS told the Taliban-run Bakhtar News Agency that Uzbekistan is one of Afghanistan’s main electrical suppliers and that the problem with the blackouts would soon be resolved, Khaama Press reported.
Since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in August of last year, power outages have continued. Periodic power outages caused by terror groups’ regular demolition of electricity pylons in the northern provinces of the nation constituted a serious problem for power delivery.

Time and again, the residents of Kabul expressed concerns over the power shortages as they complained of getting only seven to eight hours of electricity every day several times. In November last year, Kabul residents said they are living miserable lives as the authorities in the country do not pay heed to frequent power outages, Khaama Press reported.

Afghanistan imports around 80 per cent of its electricity from neighbouring countries, mainly Central Asian nations. In January 2022, Uzbekistan reduced the import of electricity to Afghanistan, causing a disruption of electricity supply in a number of Afghan provinces.