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- Tuesday, 07-30-2024, PM 1:21
- Karar Al-Asad
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The capital, Baghdad, is witnessing a major crisis after the continuous power outages, for relatively long periods, at a time when the intensity of the disputes between the provincial council and the ministry is escalating over the mismanagement of the file during the current summer period, despite the great promises of a convincing preparation season.
During the past weeks, the Ministry of Electricity issued orders to dismiss distribution managers in its circuit breakers in the areas of Al-Shaala, Al-Amel, and East of the Canal, in addition to officials in maintenance departments in various areas, due to the failure to repair faults and the significant increase in complaints.
The energy system in Iraq generally witnesses general and major power outages from time to time, especially with the onset of summer due to increased loads, according to the ministry, or due to fires and sudden breakdowns in some major generating stations, while citizens hope to resolve these bottlenecks through the announced solutions according to the government’s directions towards connecting with neighboring countries such as Jordan, Turkey and the Gulf countries.
Regarding what is happening in Baghdad, the head of the Electricity Committee in the provincial council, Noura Al-Jahishi, says, “The Minister of Electricity and his ministry did not abide by the promises they made to citizens regarding comfortable and sufficient hours of supply during the summer. This file has become in need of direct intervention and firm management by the Prime Minister himself because the structure in the ministry has become clear that it is unable to implement and accomplish anything, especially in Baghdad.”
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Al-Jahishi added, “The ministry’s talk in every crisis about the necessity of all parties standing with it in order to make the electricity file a success is unrealistic because support is available to it from the government, state institutions, and even citizens who have been patient with the poor equipment for years.”
Al-Jahishi believes that “the problem that the ministry is putting in the provincial council and its lack of cooperation must be preceded by coordination on its part, and the council should not be asked to cooperate without high-level coordination.”
She stressed that “the provincial council’s continuous demands for the Ministry of Electricity to cooperate are not targeting its individuals and staff, but rather they are the rights of citizens living in the capital, whose number reaches about 10 million people. The council’s duty is legislative and supervisory, and therefore its oversight and demands for people’s rights cannot be considered targeting the ministry in every crisis and negligence.”
“The electricity problem has not been solved by the ministry or governments over the past twenty years, and it cannot be solved this summer or within one year, despite spending large sums of money and making efforts. The ministry accuses the council of not supporting its projects by 30 percent of the budget allocations, but no one knows that when the council assumed its duties, it received a budget of 400 billion dinars out of a trillion and a little more as a result of expenditures on infrastructure projects, and the remaining amount, 200 billion dinars, went by government decision to projects east of the canal.”
The head of the Electricity Committee in the Baghdad Provincial Council stressed that “the remaining 200 billion dinars of the Baghdad Provincial budget, we made a decision to provide part of it to the projects of the Ministry of Electricity, separate from health, infrastructure, and others. A committee was formed to develop a budget based on this amount, and 10 percent of it was allocated to the Ministry of Electricity by vote of the council members, and it will soon reach the ministry according to the procedures.”
Al-Jahishi concluded her speech by saying, “The Baghdad Provincial Council will hold interrogation sessions for the general managers of the electricity departments in Baghdad, and if the answers are not satisfactory, reports and recommendations will be submitted to the Prime Minister in order to take the necessary measures against them.”
Hundreds of angry demonstrators took to the streets in the Zaafaraniya area, southeast of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in the past few days, protesting the absence of national electricity and the significant shortage in supply hours, coinciding with the significant rise in temperatures, which on many days reached half the boiling point.
It is noteworthy that the Baghdad Provincial Council, through the Electricity Committee, always accuses the Ministry of Electricity of having a major failure and an increase in corruption rates through contracting to purchase cheap and poor quality transformers, while it confirms that the hours of supply are granted according to the whims of officials in certain areas, which requires intervention from higher levels of government to stop this wrong management.
In contrast, the government continues to search for solutions to end the crisis of permanent power outages in various governorates, and to increase the hours of energy supply with the aim of freeing itself from the restrictions of private generators that supply it with quantities of fuel and impose monthly subscription prices, as it recently provided an amount of 300 billion dinars in the Cabinet session on July 2nd for emergency plan bottleneck projects and the purchase of transformers and mechanisms.
In this context, the ministry’s spokesman, Ahmed Musa, responded to the Baghdad Provincial Council’s accusations of the minister and directors’ negligence in managing the file during the summer season and not preparing for it in advance, saying, “The council must first fulfill what the budget law obligated it to do by allocating 30 percent of its allocations to support regional development projects for the Ministry of Electricity and its projects in electrifying the peripheral areas of the capital, but this has not been adhered to.”
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Musa points out that “the provincial councils, including the Baghdad Council, have refrained from going down to the slums and demarcating them to establish the basic form and include them in the official plan for providing electricity, even though this is the duty of local governments.”
He points out that “the problem in Baghdad is basically the distribution problems, of which the provincial council is a part, due to its failure to support the ministry’s projects, at the very least, by providing transformers, and this is the same problem in other provinces.”
He explained that “the Ministry of Electricity has production problems this year, and it promised an excellent supply season this summer based on the data of the previous year, which produced 24 thousand megawatts, and this year it increased by 3,445 megawatts, bringing the production volume to 27 thousand megawatts.”
The spokesman for the Ministry of Electricity continued, “The ministry promised and committed to the existence of 27 thousand megawatts, as everyone knows, but it discovered the existence of 19 thousand megawatts in excess demand during one year outside the calculations of the approved plan for production and demand since last year.”
He added, “This caused the production deficit to rise from 13,000 megawatts to 19,000 megawatts, and thus the actual total demand was 40,000 megawatts and rose to 46,000 megawatts, while the available supply is only 27,000 megawatts, which caused a disruption in the system.”
Al-Abadi explains that “the defect that occurred with the large increase was presented to the Prime Minister, who directed that a study be prepared and it was actually submitted in partnership with the Ministry of Planning, the Investment Authority, and the Standardization and Quality Control Authority. The Ministry of Electricity provided all the capabilities to the governorates to fill the warehouses with transformers, cables, maintenance equipment, and all the needs before the start of the summer season. When the bottleneck crisis occurred and the general managers did not take the appropriate measures, exemption orders were issued against them, and the principle of transparency in work appeared to the media.”
He believes that “the Ministry of Electricity has no shortcomings in production and transmission, and its work was carried out according to the plan drawn up and known to all parties, and even without malfunctions in its generating stations, and it worked with the full generating capacity, but what happened was the discovery of an increase in loads that exceeded the production capacity, which is what caused the problems in Baghdad and the governorates.”
Al-Abadi justifies that “what the ministry needs is the time factor, which the strategic plan will work on for a period of three years to complete the bottleneck relief projects, where a part will be completed each year until the third year. The plan includes adding 15,000 megawatts through new thermal stations, four thousand megawatts from combined stations within two years, and four thousand and 250 megawatts from solar stations within a period of two to three years, in addition to electrical connection projects that will provide 2,250 megawatts within two years.”
As for the emergency plan currently in effect, Al-Abadi says, “The ministry, through its departments, is supporting the distribution networks so that citizens can feel the stability of energy and the absence of its deterioration and continuous outages, which represent the basic suffering of the people.”
The electricity file represents one of the most prominent service problems that Iraqis have suffered from since 2003, despite successive governments spending more than 40 billion dollars on the sector in the past years, while the country witnesses long power outages, especially during the summer and winter seasons. Therefore, the population relies heavily on purchasing limited quantities of electricity from the owners of private generators spread throughout the country’s residential areas in exchange for monthly amounts determined by local governments.
For his part, Kamel Anid, a member of the Electricity and Energy Committee in the House of Representatives, revealed “parliamentary efforts and collecting signatures to host the Minister of Electricity regarding the ongoing failure in managing the electricity file and the ongoing malfunctions in the systems.”
Anid explains that “the minister is primarily responsible for the file and all identified problems must be identified, especially after resolving the gas supply crisis and moving towards greater imports until the completion of gas investment projects in Iraq by the implementing companies.”
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He stressed that “the government has pledged in its ministerial program to solve the electricity crisis through several studies and an accurate diagnosis of the problems, and it must commit to implementing that. The Parliamentary Electricity and Energy Committee is in continuous contact with the ministry and the government to monitor the performance of the stations and sectors in the various governorates, in addition to the major investment projects that are being worked on.”
He stressed that “there will be no leniency with general managers who are proven to have failed and neglected their duties towards their sectors, and dismissing the managers is a necessary measure so that deliberate failures are not repeated from time to time, especially in the summer, when excuses should not be accepted.”
In the same context, a report by the International Energy Agency indicates that Iraq's production capacity of electrical energy amounts to about 32 thousand megawatts, but it is only able to generate half of it due to its inefficient transmission network. It is also estimated that Iraq needs 40 thousand megawatts of energy to secure its needs, excluding industrial ones, while it ranks fifth in the Arab world and 50th globally out of 211 countries listed in the table as the largest consumers of electricity in the world, according to the American magazine CEO WORLD.
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