Da Afghanistan Breshan Sherkat (DABS) said that the power line transmitting electricity from the Kajaki power dam to Kandahar was repaired after it was severely damaged.
A spokesman for DABS, Hekmatullah Maiwandi, said that the project started two months ago and cost 272 million Afs.
“The power line of Kajaki was worn, and the technical staff of DABS changed it,” said Hikmet Ullah Maiwandi, a spokesman of Breshna.
“The new line from Kajaki power dam to the Breshna Kot area of Kandahar is 170 km long and was completed in 61 days,” said Safiullah Ahmadzai, an official at DABS.
The Ministry of Energy and Water said that with the replacement of the new power line, the amount of electricity in Kandahar will increase.
Meanwhile, the Kandahar chamber of commerce and industry said the transmission of power will increase activity in the factories in the province.
“We the factories’ owners call for the use of our natural sources, thus we can reach a fundamental solution,” said Sarwar Amani, head of the provincial chamber of commerce and industry.
This comes as the residents of Kandahar have repeatedly voiced concerns over the shortage of power in the province.
“Our main need is electricity, even if it comes to water or others’ work, all of them need electricity,” said a resident of Kandahar province.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s sole power supply company, Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat (DABS), says it has lost more than $1 billion in revenue over the past two months in seven provinces alone, as more than 200 districts and several customs offices have reportedly fallen to the Taliban.
According to Breshna officials, the company is currently unable to collect payments from about 104,000 of its customers in Herat, Balkh, Kunduz, Sar-e-Pul, Faryab, Baghlan and Takhar provinces.
The company said that the loss it suffered in seven provinces in a two-month period is 20 times worse than the loss from across all the provinces in the past.
Breshna has lost an average of more than 330 million Afghanis each year due to insecurity in Taliban-controlled areas over the past fifteen years, but since the start of the solar year 1385, the total loss has been 5 billion Afghanis.
Breshna spokesman Mohammad Hashem Sangar Niazi said: “About 1.126 billion Afghanis worth of power bills were not collected from these provinces due to insecurity. In the named provinces there are at least 104,693 customers of Breshna.”
According to information obtained from officials, more than 312,000 Breshna customers reside in Taliban-controlled areas. “The calculation of the power usage meters has been suspended in areas where there are security challenges. God willing, and upon finding a solution for the challenge, our colleagues will be deployed to those areas and the reading or calculating of the meters will resume,” said Zainab Mohseni, Breshna’s public relations manager in Herat.
Economic experts warn that the continued decline in Breshna’s revenue will render the company incapable of repaying foreign countries to import power. —Tolonews
