Demonstrators Storm Jeb Jennine Power Plant Demanding More Hours of Electricity
إقرأ هذا الخبر بالعربية
Residents of the Bekaa region Jeb Jennine stormed on Monday the local power plant demanding more hours of electricity, said Electricite du Liban in a statement.
It said that residents gathered outside the station at 8:00 a.m. and demanded that they be granted entry to the plant’s main control room.
The worker on shift refused and the protesters threatened to break the door down.
The army soon intervened to ease the tensions, but one resident managed to slip into the premises and open the power plant’s main gate, allowing the demonstrators to enter the building.
Power at the plant was soon cut off as a safety precaution until the protesters left the building.
The army succeeded in persuading the residents to leave the building and power was returned.
The EDL statement added that the power supply in Lebanon will improve gradually starting at the end of this week.
It stressed that the current demand on the network exceeds its capacity, especially during the hot summer months, which is forcing it to increase its hours of rationing.
It hoped “citizens would maintain the calm and refrain from resorting to violence, which will only damage the company’s establishments and definitely not improve the power feed.”
The state-owned firm reiterated on Tuesday that Lebanon will continue to suffer from a 1,000 megawatt shortage but will seek to distribute electricity fairly on all Lebanese regions except for Beirut which is a special case.
Protests and strikes were held by angry residents across Lebanon on Wednesday for a third straight day to protest severe power cuts during the scorching heat of the summer season.
In Beirut’s Tayyouneh district, the angry protestors blocked the Shatila road with burning tires. It was reopened several hours later.
The coastal road of the southern city of Tyre was also blocked. But the security forces and the Civil Defense Department reopened it.
Angry residents also blocked the Halba-Qobayyat road in northern Lebanon.
Similar protests were also held on Monday and Tuesday across Lebanon which has been suffering from a blackout following a malfunction in the Deir Ammar power plant.
20 June 2012, 11:59
00
Walla ne7na sh3eb wala ahdam men heik! tomorrow one will be punished by his dad so the first thing he does he goes and burns tyres ... since when did we go so low?
I wonder who is picking up the copper from the burnt tyres ... price of copper went up a lot lately... governemtn should look at that as an opportunity to make something good out of something stupid.
20 June 2012, 12:24
04
The frustration is understandable but does blocking roads and polluting the environment produce results? The ministers and the officials have their generators running and their air conditioning cooling and they do not feel any pain.
20 June 2012, 14:17
34
this is the worst cabinet we ever had in lebanon. they represent what should have never happened.
20 June 2012, 15:54
03
Don't you see that this has nothing to do with this cabinet, or the previous one, specifically? We have a weak state. Our politicians are not tasked to serve the needs of the people, all Lebanese people ask of them is to assume power so that their sect can be represented. Well my dear Lebanese, pay the consequences.
Our politicians are not accountable nor are they competent, and the Lebanese people allow them to do so. So when a problem occurs, they continue to blame the other side, unable to realize that our blind following of politics is allowing the politicians WE vote for not to carry out the state's tasks, and we let them get away with it.
We deserve this. We should be ashamed of ourselves that we still view politics in sectarian, narrow-minded, M8/M14 ways. Well, you get what you pay for.
20 June 2012, 14:19
00
Don't say "he" hasn't warned you since he took office, PLEASE! The Lebanese would have been better off not burning sherwelon nkeyeh bi jaron, but now they are left with only tires to burn. kharjkon
20 June 2012, 14:49
03
Geha, the previous Cabinet would have undoubtedly cooked up the energy/Megawatts we needed in their underground labs.... Of course, right, yeah.
On another note, why is burning tires still permissible?! Burning tires should be illegal, and should be given priority to enforce that any person caught burning tires to be publicly hung. A little extreme, given I am strongly oppose the death penalty, but burning tires cause great damage to the environment, and severely damages health to a wide radius of living beings around that tire.
I ask the President, PM, ministry of interior to enforce the illegal act of burning tires.
20 June 2012, 19:08
00
@thefool: I hope you said what you said in jest and that you are not really serious. If you are serious, how can a government that is unable or unwilling to enforce everyday traffic laws enforce a ban on tire burning?
As for this cabinet versus the one preceding it, well, all I know is that while electricity situation was still bad then, it is much much worse now. Would you not agree? If you do, then where would one lay blame, is it not at the door of the executive branch?
20 June 2012, 16:17
01
So true...the use of private generators only hurts the national electricity grid and increases corruption through the use of middlemen. Decreasing the income of the electricity company by using generators only makes their debt higher and their ability to produce much less. One big unhappy cycle...don't know what would change it, since it is electricity we are talking about...such a basic thing that people need not only to keep cool, but for all of those other pesky little things, like fresh food, sanitation flows, etc...what are they doing about that?!
20 June 2012, 18:49
00
No your wrong, if i had a choice between private generators and government power i would pick the far far far cheaper government power... Once the government gives us full power then those middlemen private generators will go out of business... its the corrupt government bureaucracy that wants to keep selling Mazoot to all those private inefficient private generators... to prove my point, why does the energy minister want to invest in low tech highly inefficient diesel burning power stations ??? Why... to make money off the diesel... who knows?
20 June 2012, 18:55
00
I Remember when I was living in Canada we also had a power cut... let see it was for 20 second and the one before that 3 YEARS prior... I guess I'm comparing apples to oranges... LOOOOOOLLL...
20 June 2012, 19:24
01
Privatize utilities and manage their control. Government run utilities will never be efficient due to bureaucracy. Stop wasting time and giving us more headaches in the process when what we need is constant 24 hour electricity.
20 June 2012, 19:30
00
When the Shia start paying, and teh Aoun clan is out of the electricity ministry only then will things get better. Nassy and his gang are bankrupting the gov't.
