By Lutfullah Kamran
JALALABAD – Over the last three decades Afghanistan has been in constant war, and has lost most of its facilities. One of them is electricity, which all of the people need but most do not have.
For instance in Nangarhar, which is where I live, there is no electricity. This makes students in higher education unhappy because we cannot study at night. Lighting, and all modern technology such as computers and the internet, requires electricity.
Some people do have electricity, such as the people who work with the government of Afghanistan. Other people use generators to get electricity for their houses. The people in the government don’t share, and the generators are expensive.
My family has a generator which we use for electricity part of the time, but it costs us as much as $100 per month. There are 15 of us, 9 men and 6 women, and together we make about $500 per month. We are fortunate, because most people do not have generators.
Nowadays the elections are going on, and the candidates are promising people that they will rebuild the dams. We used to have electricity from the electric dams built by the Russians, but they were destroyed in the wars. It has been 8 years since the new government has existed, and they have still not rebuilt the dams.
Khalid, who is 22 years old and lives in Jalalabad, says “we don’t have electricity that we can use in our daily activities. Here it is summer, and we don’t have electricity to use fans, coolers, or AC. Due to the hot weather we are facing much problem and sometimes people die due to the weather. Besides the government also promised the people and that we will rebuild the dams and people are looking forward to solve these problems.”
Electricity is very important to the Afghan people. We hope the politicians will rebuild these facilities and improve the lives of the Afghans.