The increase in power rationing hours in Latakia governorate and their irregularity have worsened Khalid’s problem in securing water for his home.
Khalid, who resides in Latakia city, told Enab Baladi that the electricity used to come for one hour daily, but currently there is no specific time for it. It has been cut off in his area for three days.
The irregularity of rationing hours and the unpredictability of electricity coming make it difficult to use water pumps to deliver it to home tanks. This is because operating them amid the current unstable rationing requires families to be at home all the time, which is something families cannot manage due to their work and school commitments.
According to what Enab Baladi’s correspondent in Latakia observed, the severity of power rationing has increased without any official justifications, in addition to a state of instability in schedules.
In Jableh city and its surroundings, south of Latakia, the electricity delivery duration has decreased from one and a half hours to just one hour for every five hours of rationing.
The situation is similar in other areas of Latakia, but some popular neighborhoods like Da’tour and Tabiyat experience delivery durations sometimes dropping to half an hour, with instability in schedules and daily changes to the rationing timings.
In the Yassin Project and the Tenth Project areas of Latakia city, electricity has been absent for more than eight hours in the past few days, as reported by Enab Baladi’s correspondent from the residents of those projects.
In Latakia countryside, such as the villages of Ruwaymiya and Hanadi, there is no specific time for electricity arrival, which comes for half an hour and may increase to an hour in the evening and night.
Unbearable heat and humidity
With the continuous rise in humidity levels in the city, fans, which can barely run for more than two hours at the maximum after the power cut, have become indispensable.
Lama, a 27-year-old private-sector employee, told Enab Baladi that she and her family had to sleep in the living room because they have two fans running on a single battery, and under the current rationing conditions, they can barely operate them for two hours each.
Lama mentioned that it is impossible to bear the humidity and high temperatures without a fan, and the one hour or half an hour of power is insufficient to charge the batteries that most residents use for lighting and charging electronic devices and fans.
Absence of the electricity corporation
The Public Electricity Corporation in Latakia, or the official governorate page, has not mentioned any news about outages or provided any reasons for the increased power rationing duration, which coincides with a wave of festivals the city is witnessing, such as the Ramita festival, whose activities were announced to have stopped due to the Israeli bombing of the city of Masyaf last Sunday.
Despite the cessation of festival activities, which included artistic concerts and various cultural activities at the sports city, the electricity situation has not returned to its previous state.
On September 8, pictures spread of a power outage at Al-Basel Stadium in Latakia during a match between the Syrian young national team and the Tishreen football team.
On July 17, the government Al-Wahda newspaper (locally issued in Latakia) criticized the return of the electricity company to “tampering” with the rationing programs.