Frequent power outages have plagued the city of Azaz in the northern countryside of Aleppo. The outages come after nearly two weeks of protests held by its residents against the electricity company because of an increase in electricity prices.
Enab Baladi’s correspondent in rural Aleppo reported on Tuesday, 19 November that in the past two days the residents of Azaz suffered sporadic power cuts in addition to scheduled cuts for power rationing at night.
Azaz media office posted on its Facebook page that several meetings were held between the local council and the electricity company to negotiate new contracts related to electricity service in the city, but they did not disclose the details of the contracts.
Both the local council and the electricity company operating in the area made no comments about the reasons behind the daily power cuts in Azaz.
The developments come after the residents of Azaz protested against an increase in the price of a kilowatt hour (KWh) of electricity by the Turkish company, AK Energy.
The demonstrations resulted in cancelling the decision of the Turkish company to increase electricity prices by the local council on 4 November.
In 2018, the privately-owned Turkish company signed a contract to implement a project, the largest of its kind, to deliver electricity to Azaz.
The Turkish state of Kilis mediated between Azaz’s local council and the Turkish company. They signed a ten-year contract in which the company undertook to provide Azaz with 30 megawatts of generating capacity in return for provision of land and resources needed for implementation.
According to the terms of the contract, in the event of any dispute between the local council and the company, Kilis will resolve the matter. But if there was a dispute between the company and the citizens, the council will take the task to resolve any issues that may arise.