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Bassil holds talks to resolve power crisis

24 August 2010

BEIRUT: Energy and Water Resources Minister Jibran Bassil held talks Monday at the ministry with a delegation from the Loyalty to the Resistance parliamentary bloc which comprised MPs Ali Ammar, Hassan Fadlallah and Nawwar Sahili.

The director of Electricite du Liban ( EdL ), Kamal Hayek, also attended the meeting.

The attendees held talks about the power cuts in Beirut’s southern suburbs and ways to resolve the problem.

Following the meeting, Ammar said that the meeting had been positive, stressing that the magnitude of the electricity crisis exceeded the Energy Ministry’s capabilities.

“It requires joining of efforts by [citizens] and the entire Cabinet to reach the attainable solutions in light of available capabilities,” he said.

Ammar said that burning tires and blocking roads would not solve the electricity problem, and called on citizens to help contain the crisis.

While calling for a fair distribution of electricity, Ammar said that Bassil and Hayek had assured him that electricity-bill levying in Beirut’s southern suburbs “was the highest in Lebanon, reaching 93 percent.”

However, the lawmaker acknowledged that there were some violations to the electricity network in the area, and vowed to remove them in cooperation with EdL , locals and civil-society committees.

Meanwhile, as protests against electricity rationing continued in different parts of Lebanon, some officials were tying any solution to the endorsement of the 2010 budget by the Parliament.

Premier Saad Hariri said during an iftar at his Qoreitem residence Sunday that “today we have a plan [to improve the electricity sector] that was endorsed by the Cabinet, and we have to implement it now,” adding that “we allocated for it more than $1.5 billion in the budget.”

Hariri said that the protests in the streets were not solving the problem “but the solution lies in the ratification of the budget by Parliament.”

Different Lebanese areas have seen a number of riots in protest against power cuts, with some angry crowds burning tires and barricading main roads.

Sunday night, a number of young men blocked a main road in the Sheikh Habib neighborhood in Baalbek, objecting to the near-total blackouts.

Also Sunday night, mobs barricaded roads in the Beirut neighborhood of Bachoura.

Meanwhile, the head of the Finance and Budget parliamentary committee, Metn MP Ibrahim Kanaan, said the electricity problem could not be solved through the ratification of the 2010 budget but through exceptional measures taken by the Cabinet.

Kanaan spoke to reporters in Parliament on Monday following a meeting of the parliamentary committee.

The committee is currently studying the budget draft law that was endorsed by Cabinet but which still awaits Parliament ratification.

Kanaan was quoted by An-Nahar newspaper Monday as saying that Hariri had not yet sent a report detailing government expenditure during the years following 2005, a step without which the budget could not be endorsed by Parliament.

Some March 14 sources were also quoted by the daily as saying that Telecoms Minister Charbel Nahhas was freezing $860 million of his ministry’s revenues at the Central Bank.

The move denied the treasury funds that could be used to implement a plan forwarded by Bassil to enhance the electricity sector, added the sources.

© Copyright The Daily Star 2010.