[ 26/01/2010 - 09:55 AM ]
GAZA, (PIC)-- MP Jamal Al-Khudari, the head of the popular committee against the siege, on Monday appealed to representative of the European Union (EU) Christian Berger to urgently intervene to address the electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip as a result of an acute shortage of fuel.
“The Palestinians are confident that the EU will positively and swiftly intervene to find a solution to this crisis,” MP Khudari said.
He stressed the need for providing Gaza with the fuel it needs to operate generators of its sole power plant.
The lawmaker added that because of this crisis, energy production dropped dramatically and most of the Palestinian families live without electricity for more than eight hours a day.
The lawmaker noted that the repeated blackouts affected water, sanitation and health care services in Gaza, warning that this crisis aggravates daily and rapidly and will lead to the deterioration of many basic services.
Deputy head of the Palestinian energy authority Kanaan Obeid had said that the power plant would stop working fully next Thursday after the EU stopped financing the industrial diesel fuel necessary to operate the Gaza station.
In the same context, Sawasya center for human rights on Monday warned of the serious impact of power crisis on all aspects of life in impoverished Gaza, warning that the power outages will rise to more than 14 hours.
The center added that if the EU continued to ignore Gaza’s needs of fuel necessary for operating its power plant and Israel refused to allow in fuel shipments, there would be a crisis similar to the one that happened in June 2006 when Israel bombed the power plant.
It pointed out that this crisis got worse because of Israel’s refusal to allow cooking gas shipments into Gaza for more than three months which prompted citizens to look for other alternatives that are unavailable or scarce as a result of the tight blockade imposed on the Strip.
The center called on the international community, the UN and human rights organizations to immediately intervene to pressure the EU to refinance Gaza’s fuel needs and Israel to allow in fuel shipments so as to prevent any new humanitarian tragedy that may result if the power crisis persisted.
For its part, the government committee to break the siege warned of a real humanitarian catastrophe that might occur if the power crisis in Gaza was not addressed quickly.
The committee said that that Gaza’s electricity deficit, according to the power company, reached in certain areas up to 50 percent and is apt to increase to more than 70 percent during the coming days.
It added that this escalating deficit would seriously affect important service sectors that are dependent on electricity especially the health, water and sanitation sectors.
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
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