Protests Condemn Deteriorating Electricity Services in Aden, Government Accused of Evading Responsibilities
Yemen Monitor / Aden / Exclusive:
Aden, the temporary Yemeni capital, witnessed a massive women’s protest rally on Thursday, denouncing the deterioration of services, chief among them the electricity crisis.
Participants in the rally raised slogans expressing the suffering of citizens due to prolonged power outages and the worsening economic crisis that has burdened families, demanding an end to the residents’ suffering as the summer heat intensifies.
The rally was called for by the Women’s Department of the Southern Transitional Council (which was declared dissolved), amid the worsening electricity crisis and the increasing hours of blackouts alongside rising temperatures.
Concurrently, the local authority in Aden held the government fully responsible for the recurring electricity crisis due to what it described as “the irregular supply of fuel to power plants, delayed disbursement of financial dues, and sluggish routine procedures.”
During a meeting chaired by Governor Abdulrahman Sheikh, the local authority urged the government to fulfill its responsibilities and address the crisis at its roots, or alternatively grant the local administration full authority and the necessary central revenues to manage the sector and meet citizens’ needs.
The local authority attributed the cause of the electricity crisis to the slow procedures of the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance, in addition to the detention of crude oil transport trucks in neighboring governorates before reaching Aden’s power plants. It emphasized that the local authority remains committed to regularly transferring centralized revenues and the revenues of the electricity corporation.
Aden authorities presented urgent proposals to address the electricity crisis, including a demand to immediately contract a floating power barge with a capacity of no less than 200 megawatts within a month, the formation of an economic committee to study the energy sector’s challenges and the decisions needed to resolve them, and addressing the debt files of government facilities failing to pay their dues to the electricity corporation.
