- "...US companies [have angered] Iraqi technicians
and engineers by employing Asian labour, while Iraqis are jobless."
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- Ten months after the occupation of Iraq in April 2003,
the electricity service has still not been fully restored.
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- The Iraqi capital, Baghdad, still suffers irregular electricity
flow. Each district in the capital has to live without electricity for
at least six hours a day.
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- The situation is in stark contrast with what happened
after the 1991 Gulf War which left the main Iraqi electrical power stations
in ruins.
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- It took the then Iraqi government three months to restore
electricity to its pre-war level.
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- "The Iraqi government used to import heavy equipment
along with spare parts enough for three years in advance. Warehouses were
built far away from electrical power stations, so this extra equipment
survived the 43 days of bombing" said Imad Khadduri, the Iraqi nuclear
scientist who worked for Iraq's nuclear programme from 1968 to 1998.
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- When the war ended in 1991 the nuclear programme came
to a halt and all its engineers and technicians were moved to organisations
assigned to rebuild the country's infrastructure. "We managed to restore
electricity in only three months", he said.
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- However this time there are a different set of problems
preventing the US authorities in Iraq from restoring Iraq's electricity
production.
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- "There are actually many obstacles." Khadduri
told Aljazeera.net.
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- "First of all, Iraqi power plants are German, Russian,
and French made, but the US are insisting on assigning technicians from
the US company Bechtel to assess Iraq's electrical power stations. Second,
they are insisting on buying equipment from Bechtel, while the main stations
in Iraq are not made in USA."
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- He said the US authorities were not allowing Iraqis to
ask technical assistance from the companies that built their electrical
stations, allegedly because they belonged to countries that opposed the
US war on Iraq.
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- Khadduri blames US companies for angering Iraqi technicians
and engineers by employing Asian labour, while Iraqis are jobless, "They
are not making use of the experience that Iraqi technicians possess in
their own country's infrastructure."
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- They are neglecting them and bringing in foreign labour.
It costs a lot of money and wastes time in training them to understand
the nature of Iraqi electrical power stations", he said.
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- US companies' domination
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- Al-Dura power plant is Baghdad's main electricity supplier.
After developing one of the plant's four turbines, maintenance was stopped
on the outbreak of war in March 2003, according to Aljazeera reporter in
Baghdad Abd al-Salam Abu Malik.
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- While the necessary maintenance equipment was imported
before the war the work has not resumed. An Iraqi engineer and subcontractor
in Iraq spoke to Aljazeera.net on condition of anonymity.
-
- "There is equipment which was imported before the
war, it is already in al-Dura electrical power station in Baghdad, but
the Americans want a fresh bidder for the rehabilitation of the station."
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- The US authorities in Iraq announced in late January
that contracts worth of 5.6 billion dollars would be granted to US companies
to reconstruct Iraqi power stations. The US companies Bechtel and the Perini
Corporation have already won contracts worth one billion dollars to rebuild
Iraq's electrical network.
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- Darkened homes
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- People in Iraq are buying electricity for their homes
from certain electricity dealers, who installed huge generators in every
district and started selling electricity to people who can pay, knowing
that 60-70% of the Iraqi work force is unemployed.
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- Aljazeera reporter in Baghdad Mahmud Abd al-Ghaffar says
there are about five million jobless Iraqis out of Iraq's 24 million people.
-
- Nasrin Abd al-Rahman, 35, an Iraqi Kurd who lives in
Baghdad told Aljazeera.net: "I have to pay a lot of money in order
to keep my house lit, my children hate darkness and they have homework
to do every evening".
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- We are victims of the US forces and people who are fighting
them, whenever a US base is attacked, Baghdad is plunged into darkness,
and helicopters start hovering all over the city" she said.
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- "We've started to suspect that they punish us by
cutting the electricity after each attack on them."
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- Powerless factories
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- Disrupted electrical power has affected the industrial
sector in Iraq as well. Many small and medium factories were closed because
of no access to electricity supplied by the country's national electricity
provider.
-
- An Iraqi businessman in Dubai who owns several businesses
in Baghdad and the United Arab Emirates told Aljazeera.net:
-
- "I had to buy a generator for each factory I own
in Iraq, but that did not help. Generators need gasoline, and gasoline
is rare in Iraq", Ziad Hathal said.
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- He said that even businesses that managed to survive
were operating under difficult circumstances.
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- "I've had to shut down the carpentry and furniture
factory I own. It is useless to produce at such a high cost. But I can
keep my ice factory operational because of the high demand on ice, because
of the lack of electricity in houses, hotels, restaurants etc." Hathal
said.
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- "But that does not mean it is easy money, because
water from the national provider is also gone, so I have two major problems
to handle everyday, to get pure water and gasoline from the black market
which is not an easy job at all."
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- Syria and Turkey are currently supplying Iraq with additional
power, while Iran, Kuwait, and Jordan are due to follow in July providing
100, 200, and 150 megawatts respectively.
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- Meanwhile, many Iraqi experts say rehabilitating Iraqi
power stations to meet Iraq's demand for electricity requires not less
than two years and several billions of dollars.
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- © 2003 Aljazeera.Net
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- http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/3B59D75D-EF48-4805-8597-4A8819EFF585.htm
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