Since 2011, Syria has faced a crippling energy crisis. Conflicts have destroyed infrastructure, reducing access to electricity and gas. Today, in Damascus, homes only have two hours of electricity per day, and gas bottles, rare and expensive, struggle to meet basic needs.
2 mins
With our correspondent in Damascus, Mohamed Errami
In the town of Jaramana, located in the southeastern suburbs of Damascus, Saeed, 40, lives in a well-equipped apartment: spotless tiles, oven, refrigerator, washing machine. But nothing works: without gas or electricity, everything is useless.
The cuts leave his family in the cold and the dark, forcing everyone to improvise for everyday life. “ We can’t keep food in the fridge because it spoils, we can’t fill our rooftop water storage tanks, and we can’t let the kids take a shower because the water can’t be heated. Honestly, we are suffering a lot from this problem and we hope that God will solve it so that we can live a normal life », says the father of the family.
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Not far from Saeed’s apartment, Haitham, a supermarket owner, struggles to preserve his goods. Its refrigerators run on gasoline thanks to a generator, an expensive luxury. Faced with high costs, he reduced his hours and risks closing permanently.
“ Electricity is available from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m., then it is cut off until 6 p.m., then it comes back for an hour and it cuts off again until midnight, then at 1 a.m., a little bit, and then it It’s over. As the goods spoil quickly in the store, we do not buy a lot of stock, but only what we can sell in time », explains Haitham.
The interim government promises improvement thanks to an agreement with Jordan and Turkey to reconnect Syria to the energy grid. While awaiting the results of these promises, Syrians remain prisoners of a daily life where light and heat have become rare privileges.
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