Following Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar Akhund's directive, DABS has boosted electricity supply to the industrial sector to meet their demands.

Feb 12, 2022

The Economic Commission, headed by Deputy Prime Minister Mullah Abdul Ghani Beradar Akhund, ordered the DABS to provide more electricity to industries according to their needs.

The industrialists' association complains that they do not have the electricity they need and that this has adversely affected their work and production. Before this, the DABS provided electricity to the industrial sector for only 8 hours a day, which, was not enough as the industrialists stated. But today, with the order of the Deputy Prime Minister, the DABS added two more hours, and now the industrialists have 10 hours of electricity in a day.

This is despite the fact that Afghanistan imports 80 percent of its electricity and generates only 20 percent of its own. Recently, Uzbekistan cut off a power line to Afghanistan due to non-payment of debts.

Maulvi Mansoor, Minister of the Water and Energy, said that, they allocated about 53 million dollars to Uzbekistan, of which they had recently paid 25 million dollars. He stated that the situation would not be rectified if the citizens and the government agencies and ministries, with long-overdue electricity bills, did not assist them in paying their bills.

Maulvi Mansoor also added that during the previous administration, the warlords and powerholders were provided with free electricity in their residential and business apartments, which they have now discontinued. He claims that Afghanistan does not have much of its own electricity and relies entirely on imported electricity, so the Afghan people need to be more careful in consuming electricity.

The Deputy Prime Minister promised that he will conduct meetings with Uzbekistan on the second electricity line, which is currently cut off, and hoped that this problem will be resolved in the near future. DABS and related ministries also recommended detaining and, if necessary, auctioning off the properties of those who have not paid their electricity bills for months and years, and the amount reaches hundreds of thousands and millions of Afghanis.

The Economic Commission, headed by Mullah Abdul Ghani Beradar Akhund, also recommended to Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat (DABS) that in order to increase the supply of electricity to the industrial sector, electricity outages must be applied to the government agencies and ministries that have their own generators or those which do not need 24-hour electricity.