Beirut – Palestinian Information Center
The Palestinian refugees in the Beddawi camp in Tripoli, northern Lebanon, raise their voices loudly. To demand a solution to the power outage crisis that they have been suffering from for 4 months.
Dozens of refugees participated in demonstrations and vigils during the past days, the last of which took place on Friday, to demand solutions to the electricity crisis and its interruption in several neighborhoods in the camp.
Also read: The Palestinians of Lebanon .. The Nakba continues
According to the Palestinian Refugee Portal; Many neighborhoods and sectors in the camp suffer from the interruption of government electricity supplies. As a result of cable lacerations and the burning of a number of transformers 4 months ago, without intervention to repair them, especially in (Sector C) and (Sector B), where one of the main transformers was burned.
A source in the camp explained that the main electrical transformer exploded months ago, and was replaced some time ago, but it burned again, in addition to theft of the cables, which complicated the crisis more and more.
He stressed that the crisis of power outages in a number of the camp’s neighborhoods has been going on for a long time. As a result of the inability of the transformers to withstand the large draw due to the overcrowding of the Palestinian refugees living in those areas, and also with the failure to install equipment suitable for the amount of electrical consumption.
Claims to solve the crisis
The Beddawi camp was established in 1955 on a hill in northern Lebanon, 5 kilometers north of Tripoli, and is currently inhabited by between 30-40 thousand refugees, as the number increased after the events of Nahr al-Bared and the events in Syria, while its population before that was estimated at about 23 thousand people. According to the Encyclopedia of Camps.
Participants in the vigils accused the supervising popular committees of negligence in finding solutions and repairing faults, which led to depriving them of at least 4 hours of governmental electricity supply, which they could have benefited from to fill water and meet the necessary needs.
The participants in the protest affirmed their demands for the People’s Committee to move quickly to fix the faults and put in place a radical and final solution to the electricity crisis, noting that the power outage causes heavy losses to them and exacerbates their human suffering.
The Palestinian Refugee Portal quoted Abu Akram Rumaih as saying: The state’s power outage is now costing the people a lot, due to the intensification of pressure on subscription.
He pointed out that operating the water pump on a subscription, in addition to electrical appliances such as refrigerators and fans, now raises the subscription bill to numbers that exceed the financial capacity of the people.
The residents of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon benefit from 4 hours of electricity supply from the Electricité du Liban, like the rest of the Lebanese regions, and the ongoing crisis deprives about half of the camp’s residents from benefiting from it.
According to Rumaih, the electricity room crisis in Sector C has been going on for years, as a result of the inability of the transformers that are being installed to withstand the large drawdown pressure due to overcrowding, and no equipment is being installed that matches the amount of drawdown.
The population in the camp is divided into four residential sectors:
Sector A: It constitutes 30% of the camp’s population. The majority of its residents come from the districts of Safed-Shifa Amr-Nahf-Saffuriyya-Jaffa-Arab Haifa-Al-Ghabisiyeh-Jish-Safsaf.
Sector B: It constitutes 20% of the camp’s population. The majority of its residents come from the districts of Safed, Suhmata, Al-Birwa, Haifa, Al-Safsaf, Al-Buziyah, Jahula, and Al-Naameh.
Sector C: It constitutes 30% of the camp’s population. The majority of its residents come from the Haifa-Jaffa-Saffuriyya-Safad-Al-Buziyeh district.
Sector D: It constitutes 20% of the camp’s population, distributed over three areas: the land of the PLO, the land of schools, and the Abu Naim buildings.
The demands of the people
The Palestinian refugee, Samira Al-Shennawi, one of the participants in the vigils, confirms that the power outage in a number of neighborhoods of the “Beddawi” camp has exacerbated the suffering of the Palestinian refugees, “who suffer mainly from extreme poverty, despair and frustration, the bitterness of asylum and deprivation, and the absence of the necessities of a decent life.” Quds Press.
Al-Shennawy added, “The people’s demands are for the electricity supply to return to the neighborhoods as it was in the past, on an equal basis with the rest of the regions,” noting that “the power has been cut off from homes since the month of Ramadan (last April).”
Al-Shennawy indicated that “the most prominent challenges and suffering that the people are experiencing during these periods is the high bill for the subscription of private electric generators, as a result of the complete dependence on them in the absence of government electrical supply.”
2023-09-02 05:55:30
#electricity #crisis #exacerbates #suffering #Palestinian #refugees #Beddawi #camp
